木漏れ日 (Komorebi)
by That-Hoopy-Frood
Summary: Winter to summer, the seasons turn. A girl is drowned in the waters of baptism, and a stranger emerges in her place. Children are trained to pray, to plea forgiveness, and to kill. A boy shares a smile, and an unbreakable bond is forged. Fate comes full circle in a distant Sodom. And finally, after many years, a past cruelty is forgiven. The Lady of Death, from the beginning...
1. Inverno

_Howbeit in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men._ \- Corinthians 14:20

* * *

The snow is falling black.

The first frosts have left their marks of consumption on the cheek of the city. The white plague of the winter turns copses to corpses, strewing the cadavers of the forests over the surrounding hillsides and freezing the Wisła to a hard, opaque lacquer.

The air smarts against the little girl's skin, delicate and cold, like gray waves breaking against sallow sand. The sky is awash with watery light –– the small, white sun, like a newly minted coin, fires thin patches of cloud to brilliance, the birches pale and shivering in a midwinter ague.

The slipping of her feet wrenches her attention earthward, towards the frozen cobbles. The path through the city is muddy water in motion, snow and slush filling deep puddles and hiding the ruts made by warmer weather.

_"Marta, musimy jechać!"_

Her parents are shouting.

_"Nie wiemy czy to było przyczyną pożaru!"_

The girl looks towards the opposite shore of the Wisła.

The city is burning.

She watches, slack-jawed and stunned, as the flames rip through the buildings, tendrils of smoke reaching desperately into the sky, as if trying to escape the inferno below.

The rusty glow ignites the river ice until it resembles a ribbon of molten lava. The city heaves like a volcano casting up its ashes, a grave emptying itself. Ash and snow pelt down in a thick, gray pall, almost feathery as it strikes her face and sticks black on her lashes. Each shriveled flake, traced in the firelight, seemed flawless –– a perfect part of a perfect tapestry.

She sticks out her tongue, and tastes charcoal, blown up by every breath of wind only to fall like dust on the ground.

_"Spójrz, czy to nie oczywiste?! Czy wszechmocny Inkwizycji!" _

Even separated by the Wisła, sound carries well over the frozen water, and the girl can hear the shrieks of women, the wailing of infants, the shouting of men; some are calling their parents, others for their children or their wives.

Over it all, the fire roars.

A burnt offering in Christ's name

_"Andrzej... czego oni od ciebie chcą?"_

_"Zostaną zabici, jeśli wyjdzie na jaw, że udzielają schronienia wa... _wampirowi," her _Tata_hisses the forbidden word. _"Czystą, nienawistną, pragnącą krwi radością rzezi...!"_

"Marta! Andrzej! You have to get out of here!"

A man barrels down the street towards them, nearly toppling over and cracking his teeth on the cobbles. The girl recognizes him as the owner of the bicycle shop; he always sneaks her sweets when her parents aren't looking, passing her candy caramels from under the countertop. His is pale and sweating and covered in soot, screaming at _Mama _and _Tata_ in a language she doesn't know. "Take the girl and run!"

"Kacper, what's going on?" her _Mama_demands, and though the girl does not understand the words, she recognizes the urgency. "Why are you speaking in––?"

"The child shouldn't have to hear to this, Marta. It's the Church... they've put Kazimierz to the torch."

"So it's true," barks her _Tata_, face rented in a snarl. "Someone must have been sheltering one of those poor wretches from the commune south of Warsaw."

The shopkeeper nods. "The Catholic zealots are burning the entire district to the ground, trying to smoke them out."

"How bad it is, Kacper? How many––"

"Dozens, Marta, maybe hundreds. The Carabinieri formed a perimeter around Kazimierz and barricaded the bridges. They poisoned the aquifer with silver nitrate before setting the buildings ablaze. They're arresting anyone who puts up any sort of resistance or tries to bypass the checkpoints. Human and... and otherwise. Word on the street is the Wiśniewskis were supplying _them_with food and shelter..."

"So the Church is destroying our city for…for _what_? Because someone dared to show those poor souls charity?! Disgusting, hypocritical, evil sons of bitches, every one of them…!"

"Oh, God in Heaven..."

"Andrzej, you don't have time." The bicycle man grabs her _Tata's_shoulder, staring unblinking into his eyes. "Take the girl and get as far away from here as possible. There was a struggle. They lost one of their knights. You know what that means. The children… they'll come for the children first, and the university just posted the entrance exams––"

"Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven..."

Suddenly, her _Tata_is right behind her, and, without speaking, gathers her close. He turns in silence towards the strange new voice, and she can discern, fetched against his chest, that he is hardly breathing.

_"Wszystko będzie w porządku, córka,"_he murmurs into her hair. _"Posłuchaj mnie i nic nie mów."_

She whimpers mutedly, though she doesn't know why. Saliva gutters down her throat and into the pit of her stomach... the fear throbs like a rotten tooth, drowning out each and every wandering thought.

"And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground..."

A dozen men march towards them, single-file and silent. Black shirts, black trousers, black boots. Each wears an emblem on his beret, a double-faced mallet framed by bolts of lightning. The red-gold glow of the fire illuminates the figures as they move out from the Kładka Ojca Bernatka. Most carry semiautomatic rifles. A few –– the ones dressed in brilliant silver armor –– carry more elaborate weapons. Their faces are freezing and their expressions stony, as though blighted by some invisible deformity of heart or mind that deprives them, seemingly, of the essence of humanity while leaving them its appearances.

There are no shouts, no trumpets, nothing but the ringing of iron-shod boots on the stones of the bridge, and the clank of ready weaponry.

_"Boże miej nas w swojej obronie..."_moans her _Mama_. She sways on her feet, her eyes closed, her breathing shallow.

"Marta and Andrzej Svárovský," announces the man who spoke before... the commander at their head.

He cuts a distinguished figure, clothed in robes of black and scarlet, his bearing positively imperial with the arrogant lift of his chin. He looks to be the same age as _Tata_, though he is far taller. His hair is peroxide blonde beneath a mantle of ash, short and curling around his ears, and his eyes are a strange cross-pollination of gray and green, like something left to molder.

"Do you know who I am, _Pan_Svárovský?"

"I... you're... you are..." Her father's throat bobs against the top of her head. "You're Emanuele d'Annunzio, the Deputy Chief of the Holy Roman Inquisition."

"Top marks." He lofts a perfectly groomed eyebrow, as though charmed by his own humor as well as her parents' docile manners.

"We have no quarrel with you," says her _Tata_, his voice rumbling through her back. "We only came out to make certain the fire would not spread to our home."

"I shouldn't think there is any danger of that, with the Vistula between you and Kazimierz."

"Are... are we under suspicion?"

"Suspicion? I don't follow."

"The... the vampires..."

"Ah... my apologies. I see the misunderstanding." The man smiles, his face creasing, though there is little kind or warm in it. He leans forward like a priest preparing to take final confession, his eyes reflecting nothing save the cinders. "No, _Pan_Svárovský, we do not think your family has been harboring one of those _monsters_. The Inquisition's business with you is purely bureaucratic. _Nie wiedziałaś, że cię szukamy?"_

_"Czego chcesz?"_asks _Mama_haltingly, her voice slow. _What do you want?_

The man's eyes glitter from creased hollows. "Unfortunately, one of our knights was killed in the effort to rout the scourge from your city. According to Article 13 of Canon Law, and as the provincial government has already been found guilty of harboring heretics, Kraków will be held responsible for providing adequate recompense to the Congregation of the Doctrine and the Holy Roman Inquisition."

He turns to her, then. Below the bags of his eyes his face does not change expression, but his nostrils flare with a deep intake of breath as though he might catch her scent even at a distance.

"I have perused the matriculation directories for several institutions of higher learning in and around this city. You intended to enroll your daughter at the Jagiellonian University next year. Not yet a teenager. Bright girl. Talented girl."

Her _Tata_yanks her away with such force she nearly bites her tongue "I'm afraid you've come to the wrong place, Excellency," he states precisely, perfectly calm, a marked contrast to the way she can feel his heart ratcheting to a fever pitch through her back. By his affected nonchalance, he might be describing his own attitude towards the weather.

But her _Tata_'s feigned ignorance belies to the blonde man his knowledge of the soldier's true errand.

"I mourn the loss of your man with you, My Lord, however... my family cannot help you. Marta..." he passes her to her _Mama_. "Head back to the house. I will see if I can clear up this misunderstanding with His Excellency."

_"Andrzej, proszę, nie możesz..."_

_"Zrobisz wszystko cokonieczne_,_" _her _Tata_does not look at her as he steers her into her mother's arms,_ "żeby chronić nasze dziecko."_

Before _Mama_can drag her down the street, the golden-haired man brings his face level to hers. She can see nothing but his eyes; she can smell nothing but his breath. Both are clean and hot, a striking contrast to the cold air and the falling ashes. He wears an easy, lazy smile, but his gaze is sharp, pale green and trained wholly on her. She can feel his eyes flaying away her flesh, paring it in fine layers, like slicing skin from an apple.

She curls an arm around her waist, unaccountably uncomfortable with the scrutiny.

"Hello there. I'm afraid I haven't all the time in the world, child, so I will make this brief. Can you understand me?"

She nods.

"Ah, you know some Latin. Good." His hand finds her shoulder, his touch feather-light, as if to soothe her –– or to remind her that he can quite easily tip her into the river.

_"Syn a––! Nie dotykaj jej!"_ whispers _Mama _hoarsely, trying to yank her away.

"Do be quiet," he hisses on a long, deep breath, the sound part impatience and part contempt. Then, to her: "You have a choice before you, girl. Come along with me –– obviating the need for... _tedious_efforts that can be better employed elsewhere –– or else your parents will suffer the same fate as our erstwhile vampiric friends across the river."

_"Chcę do mamy i taty..."_she whispers, shivering as though someone has set a fret buzz in her marrow. _"Jesteś złą osobą..."_

The man's smile snags on his high cheekbones, never reaching his eyes. Emotions flicker across his face in small jerks and twitches: his lips curling back over his teeth then pressing to a thin line; his eyes narrowing, closing, the skin around them crinkling; the muscles of his jaw tensing and dancing beneath his skin.

His expression settles, briefly, on unmistakable rage.

Suddenly, the blonde man's hand hinges out, snatching her wrist, and she stifles a cry against the grinding of bone. She bites her lip, and her mouth warms with the taste of blood.

_"Puść ją!"_her _Tata_screams, all pretenses of deference gone in an instant. _"To moja córka, błagam pana!"_

At that moment, another explosion reverberates across the river ice, the windblast sending her_Tata _to the ground and throwing the girl against her mother's stomach. A plume of smoke and ash rises into the sky. The light seems to drain away, becoming vestigil, carried in the residue of smashed matter and hovering, paralyzed, in the air; the girl sees people trying to cross the bridges, slipping and sliding on the ice and stumbling in the debris.

She spies a commotion, then, over the awful blonde man's shoulder... the survivors being herded off the Kładka Ojca Bernatka. They huddle until the soldiers begin to shout and shove through the crowd. They use the butts of their rifles as pikes, screaming at the townspeople in broken Polish. They divide the mob into smaller groups: men from women. Children from adults. The screaming is soon replaced by choking sobs of fear and the occasional, though short-lived, grunt of struggle and exertion.

_Wampirowi_: the soldiers are searching for Demons.

_"Otwórz usta!"_the soldiers order the townspeople, bellowing at volumes to shake icicles from nearby rafters. _"Pokaż zęby!"_

_Open your mouths... show us your teeth..._

_"Zamknij się do cholery, otwórz usta!"_

Families try to stay together, clinging to one another, until finally, they are put upon by a number of black and crimson uniforms and pulled apart.

Soldiers rush forward to grab her _Tata_: he screams until the blood in his face turns blue. One of the soldiers pulls a pistol from his belt and brains him violently, causing him to slump in their arms.

"Andrzej!" _Mama_shrieks, still holding an arm across her daughter's chest.

The girl's mouth hangs open, gasping in the icy thrall of shock. Though she lacks the means to express it, the moment registers as the most terrifying experience she has ever known, her heart emptying itself of all feeling in a desperate bid to keep from screaming herself hoarse.

Another soldier, operating under an unspoken order from his commander, wrenches _Mama_ away, and hits the woman's face, once, twice...

Across the street, the bicycle man, Kacper, throws a punch, and one of the soldiers –– dressed head to foot in polished silver armor, the visor of his bascinet pulled closed –– slides one of his two swords out of his scabbard; he raises the blade and brings it down in the middle of the shopkeeper's chest, just beneath his rib cage. Blood fountains from the wound and Kacper flails, moaning. With a convulsive effort, he spits into the soldier's face –– the blood dribbles and drips off the beak of the visor –– and grabs at the sword. The soldier counters by twisting the blade out of the man's chest, raising it with steady arm and plunging it into his throat. The armored soldier saws at Kacper's windpipe until the neck is half-severed and great rivers of blood are flowing across the cobbles, causing the snow to steam.

Desolate city. Snow on the streets. Fire in the sky. Blood in the air...

The girl's tiny frame stiffens, in response to a fear that, for the most part and so far as is possible, blinds her to her body's ability to move.

Her _Mama_is crying, shouting, and grappling with them so that the soldiers have to twist her arms and put a hand over her mouth because her screams are attracting too much attention from the other townspeople, bystanders who are turning to look but not daring to intervene.

Without her _Mama_to hold her upright, the girl pitches forward into the snow. Their leader, the man with the blonde hair and the poisonous green eyes, grasps her thatch of silver and levers her head up. Her eyes are open, but she stares numbly at nothing.

"I did warn you, brat." The Inquisitor presses his free hand under her chin, forcing her slack jaw closed.

She cannot bear to look at him, but she catches his face reflected in a puddle on the cobbles. It is repulsive, warped by the curved surface.

With a swift and practiced motion, he grips her arm and yanks her, with bruising force, away from the prone forms of her _Mama_and _Tata_. She feels a strip of fire burn around her wrist and across her shoulders. She cries out from a pain so ferocious she nearly retches.

"Hold your tongue, girl," he snarls, making no effort to mask his contempt. He draws his arm back. "Endure it."

She chokes on a sob.

"Come now... those who occasion loss of dignity are hard to forgive. _No-Face!"_

A tall monk, his cowl shadowing his face, sweeps past the other soldiers, who all bob their heads or cower in fearful deference. His dark robes flap wildly around his legs. He moves so swiftly and silently he appears to glide across the ground. "Vice Chief," he murmurs.

"Take this." The Inquisitor flings the girl towards the Monk. "I'll clean up here."

She finds herself colliding against a solid weight. Her breath rushes out in a question with no words, and to her distant, dim surprise, the Monk catches her with great care.

"Very well. Do be prompt about it, Emanuele."

"I always am."

Sinking to his haunches, her new minder contemplates her with immeasurable compassion and concern. The girl ducks her head, burrowing into the newfound protection. The knob of a brass button presses into her cheek. To her muted astonishment, the man's frame forms a comforting shield. He smells nice, like smoke and the sacristy. Held close to him, she realizes how skinny he is.

"_Mama_," she murmurs into his robes, "_Tata_…"

"Hush, little one." She feels the Monk brush the hair from her brow. "Avert thine eyes."

So she looks up at him instead, searching his gaze for signs of confusion or pain. He is too sharp in the cheekbones, too pointed at the chin… it is a thin face, a plain face, bereft of any distinction the likes of which would cause observers to forgive its plainness. His hair is long and wavy, snarled under a sheen of grease, left to fall artlessly about his shoulders and midway down his back. But his eyes…

Intelligent, expressive, _kind_eyes... a startling shade of green –– as hard and richly hued as jade.

_"Odpocznij moje dziecko..."_ he sings, the words rising and falling gently, stroking her hair with enormous tenderness,_ "dzień się skończył… Słońce zaświeci gdy przyjdzie poranek..."_

His voice is smooth and clear and quiet. He sings like a fallen angel might sing with the bounds of heaven fresh burst behind him, and hell still distant and unguessed. And as he croons, the girl murmurs along with him –– softly, secretly, as if the man might hear her better at a whisper. A magpie pecking at a shiny lyric...

The green-eyed Monk takes her in his arms, holds her close, the breath of snow and ashes cold around them.

She falls unconscious to the sound of his lullaby.

* * *

"Upon your profession of faith and in accordance with the Lord's command, I baptize you, in the name of your creator, redeemer, and sustainer, for the forgiveness of your sins, and the gift of the Holy Spirit..."

The girl tries to surface, her head jerking backwards against a large palm, like a crab clutching the back of her skull. She heaves against the hand with inhuman, brutish strength, desperate to draw breath. A sense of anguish, more so than pain, takes rule of her heart, and she pitches forward into the water, suddenly light-headed –– a spiral of wool, slowly turning as it unravels.

One more revolution, and the final strand will release, allowing her mind to slip the gap, floating slowly up and away.

She cries out for her _Mama_, for her _Tata_, but the words rise in a silver stream of bubbles and break, silent, upon the surface.

She emerges from the water gasping, choking until she vomits bile all over herself. She shakes so violently that she can barely hear the words over the clatter of teeth:

"Buried in the likeness of His death..."

A drop of blood rolls from one nostril, down her cheek. She tries to speak, but there are cracks in her voice, little gaps in the words, and her throat aches whenever she takes a breath. The face of the man holding her does not wear the sneer she has come to expect: it is almost amused. There is a tickling sensation in her scalp, and she realizes the man has knotted his fingers through her hair. His breath falls in a warm, even rhythm on the curve of her temple.

"And raised," he concludes, and this time there is more than a hint of malice in his voice, "in the likeness of His resurrection."

She is eleven, and the Church rechristens her Paula.

* * *

She nearly trips crossing the street, her foot catching her hem.

Her rough wool trousers are miles too long, even when she cuffs the legs. The socks bag in the ankles, and the jerkin and coat are equally huge. The itchy clothing hangs off her emaciated body like scraps from a weather-worn scarecrow. Her silver-blonde hair is matted and uneven, cut in haphazard sheafs. Her skin is white and chapped, lent color only by her eyes, the lids purple and near-translucent, like the albumen of an unfertilized egg.

"Stand up straight, Sister Paula," barks the woman at her side. "If you tug at your tunic again I'll box your ears."

"Yes, Sister Joanna."

She finds herself looking up. The sun glances off the Knight's black hair, cut into a sharp, sleek bob. Her eyes, behind her spectacles, are the color of chocolate, huge and framed by long lashes, her complexion as dark as clover honey. Joanna, unlike Paula, is dressed impeccably in her Carabinieri uniform, the red hammer and lightning of the _Vineam Domini_standard on the forearms of her jacket and embossed on her belt buckle. The other inquisitors, save Paula as a novice, wear variations of a similar ensemble: Thaddeus in Carabinieri black with silver braids around the collar and cuffs, edges trimmed in scarlet and epaulettes in silver, Simone in her ash-colored cloak, and Jacob in full battle armor, visor down, and his swords sheathed at his hips.

Romans loitering on the main thoroughfare give the group a wide birth. Their accoutrements and weapons mark them all as elite warriors and chief enforcers of the faith, members of a militarized monastic order who live to serve and defend the Catholic Church. Their reputation is well-earned, and the fear they inspire well-reasoned.

It is not, for all its ceremony, a kind life. Paula is tired, and sore, and her belly is empty more often than not. Her station predicates upon a profession of the evangelical counsels of piety, obedience... and poverty. In theory, it's the holding of all things in common within a religious community. The poor have little to lose; the moneyed and affluent are more attached to their earthly possessions. Poverty provides a deeper motivation for preaching God's covenant and attending to His flock. It compels her to live simply and to be moderate in all things.

In theory.

In practice, her hipbones are too sharp. She can count all her ribs. Her sackcloth clothing is threadbare and she can never get warm. Always, she knows a strange, incessant howling in her stomach, the hunger of a creature fasting not because she believes but because she has little choice in the matter. Not the cleansing purge of the devout, but the feverish yearning of the hypocrite.

Hunger and hard labor, fear and constant strain, the terrors of disobedience have robbed her over months of warmth and softness, her lips bloodless and thin with a grave, uncertain dignity, a mark of suffering. She knows that everything is infallibly determined and immutably fixed by the Lord, and all that happens in time is but the accomplishment of what is ordained in eternity.

Searching for any manner of comfort, she suspects, would be akin pondering a God who never reveals Himself long enough to have the cement of her entreaties dry around Him.

She does not think about the past. She does not dwell on her parents. She floats above them, navigating the currents and eddies and backwashes that serve to veil but never allowing herself to simply... _sink:_to be naked and vulnerable before a trespass into the black ocean of her memories.

She dares not plunge into the trenches... the scars with no visible bottom...

Paula knows she would never again surface.

Her belly growls, a painful tug beneath the wings of her ribcage. The sound is drowned out by the clang and clatter of Brother Jacob's armor.

On the walk to the Chancellery Palace, and in an effort to get her mind off her stomach, Paula deciphers Rome in its contradictions: its marmoreal smoothness coupled with a gritty, cobbled roughness. The city is both a living organism and a fossil. Structures from antiquity lay scattered around like bleached white bones, embedded in the arteries of modern life –– arches and columns coupled with telephone cables and pedestrian crossings. The other inquisitors move through the city with a certain confidence, aware of its significance but not subdued by it. They are not hushed by the Trevi Fountain; they are not silenced by the Colosseum or the Pantheon. There is a kind of symbiosis in their relationship to the grand places of the Eternal City: they give life to the ancient architecture by making it the backdrop of their bickering and biblical discourses, refusing to worship at its altar as if it is a holy thing.

After all, Paula affirms to herself, it is expressed in the Bible in Exodus, Matthew, and Luke... ye shall make no idols nor graven images...

The five of them proceed up the steps of the Palazzo della Cancelleria, situated between the Corso Vittorio and the Campo di Fiori, in the rione of Parione. The facade, with its rhythm of flat doubled pilasters and arch-headed windows, glares down at the group like a row of eyes embedded in the bone-colored travertine.

"Where is No-Face?" asks Brother Thaddeus suddenly, eyes narrowed in an impatient scowl. He is tall and bony with an interrogative, angular face and scruffy dark hair; he looks perpetually displeased, and now is no exception.

"Praying," provides Sister Simone, the oldest of their order, sweeping up the stairs as though levitating. Compared to Jacob, who stomps, Thaddeus, who skulks, and Joanna, who minces, every movement of Simone's is graceful, dangerously precise, highly effective and efficient. "He has cloistered himself inside the Basilica di San Lorenzo since Benedictus on the day before last."

Thaddeus grunts noncommittally. "The Deputy Director will not be impressed."

"I expect that will be No-Face's cross to bear."

"More like No-Show," he grumbles –– Joanna shoots him a look. "It's poor form. When the Secretary of Doctrine himself is sponsoring the application of a new novice, it ought to be necessary for the _Director_to make at least a brief appearance. His absence reflects poorly on the institution."

"Necessity is so often a fool's take on contingency," ripostes Joanna in her prim Albionian accent, in response to which a muscle in Thaddeus's jaw clenches. "Besides... you know what the Director's like. I wouldn't want to be the unlucky sod caught interrupting the man's Hail Marys. The last novice to try landed himself in the Tiber. I can't remember if he ever surfaced..."

The smile on Thaddeus's face forecasts the selfsame cruelty... curling, serpent-like, across his lips. "Perhaps we ought to have little Paula run and fetch him. The Basilica is right next door, even she––"

"She is Emanuele's charge," says Simone sternly. Her adherence to doctrine is strict, her prohibitions of certain forms of immorality sweeping, her wrath strongly kindled against infractions of even simple ordinances. "And a valuable resource to the Bureau."

"But if you would like to explain to His Excellency why his little charity case ended up in a rubbish tip in Alberone," begins Joanna; her eyes gleam a little, the amused twinkle of one enjoying a game for the sake of it more than in any obvious passion, "then by all means..."

Thaddeus snorts. "Lucky break, _il monello_." He makes the mistake, then, of trying to ruffle her hair.

Despite her hunger, Paula still possesses most of her faculties, and despite her size, a certain wiry strength. Without bothering to snarl, grunt or make any other sound at all, she simply raises her own hands to grasp Thaddeus by the ears and wrench his thin face down to smash it into her own forehead. There is the crunch and wetness of a bloody, snotty nose –– at least, she hopes the wetness is from the nose and not any number of acne sores. Thaddeus yelps in pain, pinching his nostrils.

"Why, you little..."

"Don't touch me again," intones Paula dully.

"You should know better, Brother Thaddeus," intones Simone. She quotes solemnly: "Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged."

"Besides, don't you have anything better to do than antagonize a skinny little wretch like her?" asks Joanna, chuckling gamely.

Jacob, as usual, says nothing.

Thaddeus's visceral fury appears to increase a few degrees as he realizes he is being ridiculed. He bears his teeth in a snarl and removes a thin nightstick from his belt.

"The brat needs to learn to respect her elders."

Joanna's smile lengthens into a thin frown. "Oh, don't be such a bloody peawit, Thaddeus. Must you do that now..."

"Present your hands, Sister Paula," he barks, ignoring Joanna completely.

She does as she's told.

He strikes her thrice across the knuckles, until the ragged flesh and sinew of her hands is coated in gore, the flow of blood winding down her wrists and dripping from her elbows.

Paula does not make a sound throughout the beating. She schools her face to complete detachment, until her dark eyes seem intent only on tracing the bloodstains in the cuticles of her nails.

Simone clears her throat. "If you've quite finished, his Excellency and the Cardinal are expecting us."

Thaddeus swipes the nightstick through the air in a quick, whooshing arc, wicking blood from its surface. Red constellates the cobbles. "Whoever heeds discipline shows the way to life," he parries Simone's recitation with one of his own, "but whoever ignores correction leads others astray."

"Point taken, Brother."

Paula, bringing up the rear, stuffs her bloodied hands into her overlong sleeves, out of sight.

The halls of the Cancelleria are cool, echoey, empty of tourists despite being the height of the season. The silence is emphasized rather than disturbed by the barking of two dogs in the nearby park of the Fontana di Campo, and by the dull, rhythmic hum of the traffic along the Corso Vittorio. The party of inquisitors move towards a simple courtyard in the heart of the compound, the space featuring superimposed open loggias and a closed second story decorated with pilasters. A small fountain gurgles at the center of the grounds. Paula's attention is drawn to the group of three men clustered in front of the fixture.

"It appears your party is one short, Simone..." The Deputy Director, Emanuele d'Annunzio, retains his attractive smile, but his tone, Paula thinks, holds a certain frustration, setting the girl immediately on edge. "Where is the Chief?"

"Forgive me, Excellency," capitulates Simone. "He has been deep in prayer for several days now, and he shows no sign of emerging in the near future."

"Ah, well... would that he had made an exception..." murmurs the Deputy Director with a clarity and a politeness that Paula knows he only uses when he is being exceptionally hostile. Although his amiable expression doesn't falter, she has the distinct impression that it is only because he is trying to save face in front of his guests. There is a shadowed cast to his countenance, and she can feel the enmity and embarrassment suffusing the air like censer smoke.

"Then again, I would not dream of coming between a man and his Maker." The Deputy Director turns to the figure on his right. "All the same, I beg Your Eminence's pardon for my counterpart's absence."

"It is no matter," declares a man robed in the pristine scarlet and gold of the cardinalate. His voice is smooth and refined, and where the Deputy Director sounds tense, the Cardinal's tone is as unruffled as his immaculate vestments. "So long as the Director continues to labor in the service of the Lord and His Holiness, his private contemplations are his own business."

Paula only knows Alfonso d'Este, Secretary of Papal Doctrine, by reputation, too low on the rungs of inquisitorial hierarchy to have ever earned an audience with the man. He is shorter than she anticipated, certainly over forty and considerably under sixty. He looks hard and fit despite his age, like a man who can be a serviceable ally or a particularly unpleasant enemy, with none of the soft indolence characteristic of certain ecclesiastical dignitaries. His eyes, the color of a sky from which snow will soon fall, are framed by thick, arched eyebrows; there is a fine dusting of white whiskers on his stubbled chin. The midsummer sun illuminates one side of his face, while his wide-brimmed galero throws the other into dramatic shadow.

Tired and hungry, Paula's eyelids flutter as she tries to keep her focus on Cardinal d'Este, but all at once, the talk around her seems to recede, until all she hears is the distant, throbbing pulse of her muffled heartbeat. In the faint, stifled quiet, she finds her gaze drifting to the third, still-silent member of the Deputy Director's group.

She will discover later that he is two years older than her, but surmises immediately that he is at least two heads taller. He towers over the Deputy Director and Cardinal d'Este both. And he is exceedingly lanky: his socks just barely visible between shoe and trouser leg, his large hands hanging almost to the middle of his thighs –– an adolescent skinniness upon which the Church's training will heap muscle and sinew. She imagines a boy of his height built like Brother Jacob, broad-shouldered and brawny under his armor, and she understands, suddenly, why the Minister of Doctrine is so eager to sponsor this boy as a novice.

But her visions of some violent, steel-plated Goliath end, abruptly, at the boy's oddly somber face. The curved hollows of his cheeks are accentuated by a long, narrow nose, somewhat crooked from an old break. His chin-length hair is the color of seawater, and he wears it pulled away from his face in a neat tail. His eyes are beautiful... a pale blue, almost silver, slanted like wings and accented by long, dark lashes.

There is nobility, and a certain sober dignity, in his face, but she sees nothing of d'Este's coldness or the Deputy Director's cruelty. The boy's eyes, she decides, are too frank. Too transparent, as clear as their color. He carries himself in a way that speaks to an affluent upbringing, but his expression is so honest that Paula doesn't feel herself on tenterhooks around him as she does the others.

Perhaps wise to her scrutiny, registering it like noonday heat on the side of his head, his inclines his chin, and for a moment, his gaze finds hers across the courtyard. His fair skin and pale platinum hair seem to hold their own radiance, and he blinks, once... a slow slap of his eyelids, lashes fanning across his cheeks. Surprised, perhaps, by the solemn gravity in her expression, or by the sight of one so small and so slight outfitted in Inquisition garb. Or else simply sizing her up as he might any other person who has managed to confound his expectations.

Or perhaps it is for some other reason, one for which she does not yet have a name. It is not a possibility Paula wishes to examine. She consigns herself to let it sink back into the murky depths of her being. Yet another unnamed creature of the darkness, left for a more intrepid adventurer to catalogue.

In any case, his attention moves away from her as quickly as it arrived; he can ill-afford the distraction, under the scrutiny of the most powerful men in the Vatican.

But, as she watches, she sees one of the boy's large hands lift from where it rests at his side.

He waggles his fingers, just once, the motion subtle enough to go unnoticed by the Cardinal and the Deputy Director, but clearly intended for her to see.

Paula frowns.

Did he...

Did he wave at her...?

Cardinal d'Este gazes with mild interest over the assemblage of knights, sparing his fellow Germanican, Simone, a comradely nod, and smiling with grim satisfaction at the sight of Joanna, Thaddeus, and Jacob poised in perfect parade posture.

He ignores Paula entirely.

"Esteemed members of the Bureau," he purrs; his jowls are damp with excitement. His gaze shines in expectation. He crooks his fingers in a beckoning gesture, and the young man steps forward, straightening until the top of his head nearly scrapes the arch of the nearest pilaster. "Allow me to introduce you to our newest initiate... and the second member of the newest cohort."

The boy's eyes blaze with righteous gravity.

"Welcome to the Department of Inquisition... Pietro Orsini."


	2. Primavera

_The compassion of the wicked is cruel._ \- Proverbs 12:10

* * *

The boy named Pietro Orsini drowns in the sacrament of baptism.

Brother Petros is the man who surfaces.

They are thrown together almost immediately. Still strangers, they train together, study together, pray together, collaborating with each other until they are able to faithfully, and collectively, respond to the grace of their divine vocations. The novitiate period is characterized by the initiation of cohorts –– often pairs, like binary stars, orbiting in close proximity. Just as the mission of Paul and Silas commanded the prophets to work together seamlessly, heedless of the danger, the two novices are expected from their first introduction to perform an intricate _pas de deux_ with their partner: the Director and his Deputy; Simone with Jacob; Thaddeus with Judith; Thomas with Joanna...

Petros with Paula.

Under the watchful eye of the Congregation of Doctrine, they are taught to cultivate Christian virtues; through prayer and self denial they are instructed in the intricacies of salvation and encouraged to read and meditate on the sacred scriptures. Through rote memorization and endless recitation –– punctuated only by brutal punishment for careless mistakes –– they are prepared to cultivate the worship of the Lord in the sacred liturgy. They are educated in the manner of leading a life consecrated to God through the evangelical counsels. They attend frequent confession and reception of Holy Communion. They are encouraged to self-flagellate and fast.

They are given weapons and trained in the art of combat.

They are taught strategy and tactics.

They study the Epistle of Jude and Revelations... _For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink_...

They learn of the history and extent of the vampire scourge.

They learn to fight them.

They learn, in no time at all, to hate them.

Novitiate is emotionally constricted, competitively hostile. Subject to participation in the full canonical hours, they sleep little. Yoked to an expectation of abstinence, they eat less. By swearing vows of poverty, chastity, and absolute obedience, they join the consecrated life, members of a state, during the period of their novitiate, which is neither clerical nor lay –– a narrow remove from the rest of the world. Trapped in transitional liminality, they are bludgeoned into conformity, inculcated with the belief –– the _understanding_ –– that a virtuous life is one unhindered by the limitations of individual morality, free of humane inhibition, mindful only of the sanctions of Divine authority.

It doesn't matter in the slightest that Paula is still not quite sure what living virtuously actually _means_, because it's one of those words that lies outside the realm of provincial fact and touches on speculation. Nothing about her life, she finds, is completely explicable.

Including one Brother Petros.

He is a difficult person to understand, despite the fact his personality is, at times, _breathtakingly_ straightforward. Though she does well to hide it in their day to day interactions –– of which there are many –– she is rather flummoxed by the large, lively boy. The insouciance with which he makes himself at home in the seminary and attempts at every juncture to strike up a friendship with her is nearly suspicious, verging on stupid. He is affectionate, animated, devoted, and at the same time entirely incomprehensible. She suspects she will never fully understand what goes on in the head and heart of this confident, merry emissary from a world of wealth and prestige, the dimensions of which she can scarcely imagine.

Paula learns quickly that his eagerness, his arrogance, the sheer force of his presence are the benefits of past entitlements the likes of which she will never know –– privilege, rank, and wealth sleep fitfully in the same bed as honesty, humility, and faith. He is willing to adjust, open to accommodate, and ready to tolerate, but there are luxuries from his old life from which he struggles to entirely detach himself.

Not so the case for her. There is comfort in the routine and constancy of Novitiate, a certain functionality in the proverbial vesture of ceremony. She craves the precision of a liturgy that allows her to admit her own inequity, to admit to a dependence on ineffable forces she neither understands nor controls. The guilt and shame remain, of course, but they are comprehensible things, their perimeters defined by confession and repentance in a way that is comfortingly systematic. The Church gives her a means by which to transmute her powerlessness into purpose, her sin into strength, and so she gives herself willingly, surrenders body and soul, to the caprices of a faith she cannot govern, yet without which the conduct of her daily life would grind to a standstill.

Her attitude is not a novel one; like many others of the cloth, she conceives of her destiny as separate from herself. The road is laid out a little ahead of her by scared hands, and she walks down it without question.

There is, she decides, a profound comfort in putting oneself at the mercy of Providence.

When she turns thirteen, she chooses to study business administration at the local university. Brother Petros, at fifteen, studies theology.

He is intelligent and devoted to his studies, but his concentration is lamentable. He seems beset by an insatiable restlessness, evidenced in the interminable tapping of his foot against the floor and the drift of his head towards the windows over the course of their lessons. She senses his discomfort: he is too large for most of the furniture and he struggles to keep his tongue behind his teeth, ready always with questions or, more likely, overloud pronouncements of puzzlement or amazement. When he does speak, he brutalizes the solemn quiet of lecture, incapable, or so it seems, of anything quieter than a shout.

Inelegant, Simone decides one day. Unwieldy, conclude Joanna and Judith.

Deputy Director d'Annunzio is far less kind.

_Oafish._

But of the two of them, Petros learns quickly how to fight: how to hold the mace, how to stand to spar. He manages it almost without instruction. It shocks Brother Jacob with his short swords, which took him months to master, and Sister Simone with her needles, which took her far longer.

But one is not shocked when a newborn babe knows how to breathe; one is not shocked when an eagle pitches from the nest and takes flight for the first time.

The entire Inquisition soon learns it ought not be shocked when one hands Brother Petros a weapon and he knows how to use it.

"Sister Paula!" a familiar voice bellows at her from across the courtyard, shaking her from her thoughts. "Spar with me!"

Several knights loiter in the Cortile del Belvedere, a cobbled terrace connecting the Vatican Palace and the Villa Belvedere, paved in a saltire of stones and flanked by arcaded buildings on three sides and by bleachers set against the Vatican walls on the fourth. To accommodate the rising landscape, the lawns are terraced into three levels, connected at intervals by monumental staircases.

Early in the morning, the Belvedere Courtyard is quiet and empty, allowing Petros and Paula to wile away the small hours between Lauds and Prime; with the Director and Sister Simone guarding the Holy Father, the rest of the Vice Chief's team have a little free time before compiling the versicle and prayer to accompany the morning's traditional psalms.

Paula takes a deep breath, enjoying the brief moment of respite. The scent of burning wood wafts from somewhere far in the distance. Most of the city is asleep, still. The dew is white upon the grass, shining in those first few rays of sunlight. The air is very clear and the long morning shadows distinct, casting the colonnades and statuary in long, thin regiments across the lawns. The first sounds of the Papal Enclave nibble at the edge of the stillness.

Which is ruptured, again, by a buoyant, deafening entreaty: "Spar with me, Sister Paula!"

"I'm tired," she says neutrally. She isn't tired. "And I have no interest in your impromptu training exercises." She has, in fact, a great deal of interest: Pentecost Sunday and Lent ended a week ago, during which time both novices surrendered physical activity and sequestered themselves in their cells like two anchorites. Paula is restless. Where the rest of the inquisitors are dressed in their black and crimson livery, Paula and Petros wear vestments of rough broadcloth, symbols of their Novitiate. The fabric is itchy and hot, and the irritation fans the spark of agitation into a flame. They are both spoiling for a fight. "Ask me later."

"Don't tell me you're afraid."

"Fighting in the courtyard before morning mass is hardly appropriate behavior. We ought to be preparing for Prime."

He sighs with mock solemnity –– the air of the long-suffering martyr. "You're too proper, Paula."

"_Sister_ Paula," she chides, nose wrinkling. "And you're too belligerent, Brother Petros. If you took half the energy you devoted to being irritating and channeled it into something productive, like leaving me alone, I daresay you could be one of the greatest warriors of our age."

"Thank you, Sister Paula!"

"... It was not intended as a complement."

"Nevertheless, it was received as one!"

It takes every ounce of her not inconsiderable willpower to keep from smacking him. "In any case, you aren't that enticing a sparring partn––"

Tall and loping, he clears the distance between them in a single stride. She barely has time to turn her head before steel fingers grasp her left wrist. His arm hinges around her waist: he out-muscles her by a comical margin, pulling her close as though to tango.

She registers the angle of his hip a few moments too late. He pulls her forward and flips her onto her back. She twists through the air, guided by his hands, and her shoulders smack against the lawn. The air bursts from her lungs in a startled gasp, the dew soaking through her clothes.

He beams down at her, the gesture broad and toothy, bordering on wolfish. Which annoys her because the smile dissipates her indignation. She wants to hold herself aloof, but he seems determined to scupper her every effort.

"Textbook," she murmurs.

"Manifestly," he agrees with infuriating benignity. He offers her a hand. She takes it, and he hauls her to her feet with a disconcerting lack of effort.

Playing. He is toying with her. He has insisted on any number of occasions that he doesn't pull his punches, but she's learned to read nuance in every movement. He could have slammed her down with enough force to break her neck. Instead, he held her through the over-hip throw, to ensure she landed correctly.

He leans forward a little, bending at the knees. She swears she can see him vibrating. "Please?"

"No. I don't want to dirty my vestments."

"What," he pinches his clothing between a thumb and forefinger, "these glorified potato sacks?"

"We're only given two sets. Unless you're offering to do the laundry?"

"If I say yes, will you indulge me?"

"No."

She watches a faintly predatory expression pull at his lips. "You're frustratingly stubborn."

"_Manifestly_... that, and," she lowers her eyes, "the Deputy Director is watching us."

"Ah." Petros's eyebrows come together in a grimace. He opens his mouth, then closes it.

Rare is the occasion when her stubborn partner finds himself unwilling to argue a point, but Petros's overloud personality practically cowers whenever in close proximity to the Deputy Director. Even now, he anticipates their superior's anger; he goes so far as to flinch, as though bracing himself for a beating.

Instead, the Deputy Director seems content to stand at the edge of the lawn, paying them an incredible amount of attention but making no move to intercede. She sees something play across his features... an inkling of interest Paula recognizes as a faint though formidable curiosity. He wants to know how this will play itself out...

The Inquisition, as an institution, seeks to portray itself as the most vigorous and effective fighting force against the vampires. Emanuele d'Annunzio is in no small respect responsible for their reputation. His intention is always to throw into serious doubt any effort geared towards tolerance or moderation –– or, Paula suspects, benevolence of any kind. Violence, even violence between individual inquisitors, is neither random nor indiscriminate. It carries a well-calculated set of coded messages: that enemies of God and the Holy Mother Church exist, that moderate law and order is responding to it ineptly... that only the Inquisition is ruthless enough to protect the Christian world from the scourges of the Empire. To tolerate –– indeed, to encourage –– violence is a harsh reality in the face of the vampire's provocation. Altruism is, in the end, incapable of preserving public security; accordingly, d'Annunzio does not curtail infighting amongst his subordinate knights: he _cultivates_ it.

Intrinsic worth, sacred value, and essential dignity mean nothing to the Deputy Director. D'Annunzio is an acolyte of a warrior-based cult of personality who wallows in cruelty and conquest. All life, he believes, is ripe for violence. He rewards inhumanity, encourages disconnection and isolation, foments distrust and resentment. He would have them all driven to pitiless brutality by hate and rage and pain and loneliness. To him, the _pas de deux_ of the cohort pairs is less a dance and more a drawn-out, carefully choreographed duel.

"Brother Petros."

"Huh?"

"Swords, tipstaffs, or hand-to-hand combat?"

He blinks. "Err..."

"I am flexible."

His cheeks pinken until his eyes are startlingly blue in contrast. "If you're giving me a choice..." he mumbles.

"Which is more than you gave me three minutes ago."

He concedes the point. "In which case, you should make the decision."

"Very well. Bōjutsu."

His eyes widen just slightly. Surprised but not thrown, she decides. "I thought you preferred emeici."

"You wouldn't last thirty seconds in a knife fight."

Petros reddens. He splutters his indignation for several ignominious seconds, spends several more trying to defend his combat capabilities, before the novices sense one of the other knights, the Flemish Sister Judith, _de Moordenaar_, drawing alongside them. Wild blond hair, glaring gray eyes, a tiny bulbous nose, and full cheeks, replete with tattoos from a past life devoted to far less virtuous vocations. She's smoking a noxious clove cigarette and grinning, daring anyone to challenge her on the indulgence.

Neither Petros nor Paula picks up the gauntlet.

Her smirk is infuriatingly smug, and as she sizes them up, she inclines her neck in an imperious cat stretch. The older woman sweeps her gaze over them both with no sign of guilt, her attention lingering on whatever draws her interest.

_Two heads of beef at auction._

Judith, armorer and assassin, carries a pair short staffs in her hands. Without prompting, Petros takes one. Paula takes the other.

"Look at the pair of you, looping around each other like two waltzing mice." She smiles her contempt, barring nicotine-stained teeth. "Petros here outweighs you by nearly seven stone and stands at twice your height, Sister Paula. This ought to wrap itself up quickly, eh?"

"From Isaiah," Paula quotes solemnly, _"For I am the Lord your God who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you."_

"Indeed." Sister Judith snickers. "What a shame you're left-handed, Sister Paula."

Petros throws Judith an odd expression. The look lasts an uncommonly long time, before he shakes his head and begins to tread in a near-perfect circle across the lawn.

"Face me, Sister Paula... I, Brother Petros, promise you a fair and honorable contest!"

"I invite you to try." Despite his austere looks, he has an almost childlike eagerness in his expression that she can only account for in his eyes. "Why must you insist on referring to yourself in the third person?" she asks. "It's conceited."

"A knight with any jot of honor would do well to announce himself before a great trial."

She blinks. His blithe confidence sometimes nettles her. "I think," she says, "you are being a trifle disingenuous."

Paula then throws the first strike, a formal move.

"Humor me by pretending I'm sincere." Petros parries. "How else are the Lord's enemies to know who they face in battle?"

"Let me assure you, you are not," she snaps her stave out from her elbow, and her partner leaps aside, "an easy person to mistake for someone else, Brother Petros."

He answers only by swinging his staff wide and high, well beyond her reach. She doesn't block in time. He connects with her shoulder. She glares stonily at him. He seems a bit surprised at having hit his mark, himself.

The bout goes on, slow at first, each taking turns –– strike, block, strike, dodge, strike, block, like eels in a bucket, slithering over one another and trying to bite each other's tails. Learning from her first misstep. Paula avoids the rest of his wide swings with what she imagines must be maddening ease. Sensing this, Petros breaks from his prowl suddenly, lunging across the grass. But faster than he can follow, Paula ducks and slashes her stave across his legs, finding her mark before he can jump. She makes contact and hears the sharp _crack_ of rattan wood against his shins, the report echoing through the Cortile de Belvedere.

Petros glances at the Deputy Chief, who just smirks and shrugs.

The blue-haired boy's eyes narrow shrewdly. Mere minutes ago, his eagerness painted him as reckless and hungry for battle, but when it matters, the large novice shows prudence. His movements carefully calculated, he drives the staff into her midriff, the strength behind the blow enough to chip the rattan and momentarily rob Paula of breath. The blow pushes her across the lawn, her boots leaving long, deep gouges in the grass. She sucks in desperate lungfuls of air as she takes a moment to recover –– a luxury she can ill afford. The tide momentarily turns in Petros's favor as he takes advantage of the lull. He sweeps his stave under her knees and sends her sprawling in the opposite direction, her palms burning against the loose gravel of the path.

She hears the Deputy Director applauding from some distance away.

She hears his laughter.

Paula evens her breath and levers herself to her feet. She flings herself forward –– any element of subtlety and stealth she may have had is gone; her only virtue now lies in her speed.

Petros presses his advantage as best he can, but the opportunity is wasted when he lunges for Paula and, her being a foot shorter, overbalances.

His stave comes in a swift, downward strike, and the splintered rattan catches on her habit.

"Uh..."

The cloth rips as Paula tears herself free, a thin line of blood welling from her shoulder as she dives out of range. She hits the ground heavily but is on her feet at once, hand brushing the exposed skin –– just a scratch. She can smell iron, can taste the adrenaline in her mouth, sharp and metallic. Her throat burns dry.

She darts towards him, her hand shooting out and grabbing his wrist in a crushing grasp, forcing Petros to drop his lance. She brings one of her legs up and plants a knee in his gut, her grip wrenching backwards as she does so. She hears a _pop_ –– in an instant, his right shoulder appears to rest too far forward, hanging below where it should.

Petros merely grimaces, teeth bared. His pale blue eyes drift from his dislocated joint to her face and taper dangerously; Paula holds her stave crossed in front of her, breath even and demeanor calm. She allows him to pick up his staff.

His intensity escalates with each blow –– each a little faster and harder than the one before, but bereft of the caution and attentiveness he exhibited before the injury. Desperation turns him unwieldy. Paula, meanwhile, moves with the swift grace of a cat, easily avoiding the frenzied swipes and lunges of her opponent. She unleashes a flurry of attacks concentrated at his legs and midriff, forcing him to lean over. Petros struggles to parry, his dominant arm hanging uselessly at his side.

Paula drives her staff into his lower abdomen, bruising his kidney. Petros doubles over, grimacing in pain. She swings and cracks the rattan across the side of his face, loosening his balance and causing blood to seep from his temple. She spins the last strike into a kick that sweeps Petros's long legs out from under him, knocking him to the ground. She pulls back, leveling her staff at his forehead.

Paula freezes, her heart thrumming arrhythmically. Her pulse goes erratic. She struggles to contain a swell of dread, rising like bile in her throat.

What...

_What has she done..._

For a moment, nothing happens. Neither one of them can speak as they lower their heads to their chests, almost retching to get their breath back. Paula bites down on the inside of her cheek until she tastes blood.

She half expects Petros to grab her hand and break her fingers. And if any other inquisitor were on the other end of her stave, they would have done just that... punish her for her disobedience, just as Brother Thaddeus did at the Chancellery Palace when she was twelve...

But, to her muted astonishment, after a few minutes, she watches something fight first with one corner of Brother Petros's mouth, then the other, before breaking all over his face like a sunrise. He grins in almost giddy delight, carelessly and unapologetically ignorant of the severity of her position, the extent of her insolence.

"THAT WAS MARVELOUS!"

Paula steps back from Petros, allowing him to leap, unassisted, to his feet. She blots a sheen of perspiration from her brow with her sleeve before crossing an arm over her breasts, her left hand grasping the elbow opposite, her staff tucked under her armpit.

Thoroughly trouncing the Inquisition's prize novice is the most direct she has ever been in her disobedience of her superior's authority, and it feels liberating. Unfortunately, the fear coursing through her veins does not allow her to relish her newfound independence. Paula falls silent, her exuberance gone in an instant. She is, by turns, bolstered by pride, muddied by confusion, withered by terror...

"I'm sorry about your shoulder," she says, even as she feels the blood draining out of her face. "I pray your injuries will not inconvenience you overmuch."

"Not overmuch. That is," Petros corrects, gazing at her with something not unlike awe, coloring clear to the roots of his hair, "not at all." She finds a tiny mote of her soul touched by his sincerity and awkwardness, and firmly represses a surge of endearment for his obvious embarrassment. "There is no shame in defeat at your hand."

"Am I so far beneath your consideration?"

"NO. No, I... I only meant..." Petros leans his head back and briefly closes his eyes as if praying for deliverance from his own tongue. More often than not, he is utterly lacking in even the rudiments of tact. "You... are the best of us, Paula," he finishes with a gusty sigh of relief. "You are a magnificent fighter."

Paula hardly hears him, failing to register the praise. By chance, she looks up towards the east wing of the lower court, her eyes snagging on a window near the Porta Julia of the Vatican's outer wall, its massive masonry recalling the Roman city gates in expressing power and impregnability. A small group of clergy cluster around the veranda. Her gaze lingers on one of them, a bent, wizened figure. Strands of white hair hang lank from his skull. His skin is wrinkled, like rings of wood marking the ages of his life, his posture slumping slightly, a though his once-admired presence is unable to compel the command it once possessed.

But then, as though wise to some distant, unguessed scrutiny, the white-cassocked figure takes a breath and smooths himself down, transforming himself in an instant from a rattled, edgy old man...

Into a decorous, dignified pontiff.

Paula goes cold. The temperature in the courtyard plummets so fast and so far, she is almost surprised her breath doesn't come out in clouds.

Brother Petros is... an _asset_ –– the product of a dynasty of prelates and bishops dating back to before the Dark Times; moreover, his family is one of the Ministry of Doctrine's primary financiers, if the rumors are to be believed. If Petros's kin were to learn of his defeat at the hands of a novice several sizes and two years his junior, she suspects the Deputy Chief would sooner flog her bloody than suffer the shame.

To add injury to insult, if his vantage is any indication, there is a very likely possibility that His Holiness, Gregorio XXX, witnessed the entire fight.

Paula finds she has to fight the urge, then, to turn tail and flee. Instead, she risks a glance over her shoulder –– and finds herself staring straight into the Emanuele d'Annunzio's rage-darkened expression.

Before, he was entertained, lost in the joyful abandon of watching what he no doubt anticipated to be a comically one-sided contest, only the merest undercurrent of resentment running through him. But now, she suspects that undercurrent has torn the man's composure asunder. Paula can sense it in the air, can see it on his face; she knows that the Deputy Director, in watching her tidy defeat of the Inquisition's prize novice –– in front of the Pope, no less –– has gone from aloof and amused to dangerously, furiously wrathful.

As he approaches them, his entire body bristles with contempt, something scintillating through the cracks in his perennially charming facade, something Paula does not wish to face unleashed. All glowing irises and thin dark pupils, hooded with a harbinger of danger and fiercely angry.

"Sister Paula... a moment, if you would." A stark contrast to his expression, the Deputy Director's voice is prodigiously uninflected. He turns to give her sparring partner a quick glance-over. "Brother Petros, get yourself to the infirmary. Sister Simone is tending to the Holy Father, but Garibaldi or that new physician, Wordsworth, ought to be on call."

"Yes, Excellency!" thunders Petros, loud enough to startle a flock of greasy gray pigeons roosting in the bronze Pigna.

Petros starts to jog at pace, immediately hisses with pain, then settles for holding his elbow as he half-heartedly hobbles towards the narrow wings of the Villa Belvedere.

Left by herself, a shiver of fear frosts Paula's skin, her thin arms crossing over her chest, her entire being attempting to shrink in on itself. She swears she feels the ground fall out from beneath her feet; like an autumn breeze blowing up dead leaves, the passing seconds disturb rank upon rank of her carefully constructed frontages until she suspects she would not have felt more exposed and vulnerable if she stood mother-naked in front of her superior.

She feels, suddenly, indescribably alone.

Paula comes to a sobering understanding: where Petros saw a sparring match, she recognizes a desperate and dull-witted act of rebellion. Her victory, in of itself, constitutes a direct challenge to d'Annunzio's authority, an inoculation, however feeble, against the wasting disease his presence has wrought upon her life, which blights at every moment each minute shred of her dignity.

She peers up through the spikes of her eyelashes to find d'Annunzio considering her idly, gray-green eyes slitted. She can see through the Deputy Director's cooly indifferent expression to the passionless glare of the creature that lives inside. Cold, cruel, and vengeful. No one, Paula decides, has ever looked at her with real hatred until now. It is clear that the Deputy Director wishes every ill upon her short of death –– perhaps not even barring that.

At her side, the knuckles of her folded hands go bone white with strain.

"Well done, Sister Paula," says the Deputy Director softly. He looms over her, his mere presence enough to cull the novice into subservience. A sly, mirthless smirk crosses his face, and he seems to simmer with malice.

Paula swallows. "Thank you, Excelle––"

The back of his hand cracks across her face, a slap that rocks her back on her heels.

It hurts, the blow violent and ugly and unjust.

Even as she stumbles, Paula feels him grab her arm, strong fingers cutting tightly into her bicep. She struggles to get her feet under her and regain her balance, her lungs swelling and spilling like bellows, her head ringing, teetering at the threshold of full-blooded panic. He raises in Paula a feeling of leaden, bloated fear, like a corpse winched from a river.

"Embarrass me like that again," he tells her, inhaling the cold morning air, exhaling enough fog to announce a pope; she can feel his breath's touch on her –– wet and delicate, like mist, "and I will have you stripped to your skin, tied to a post in the middle of the Piazza San Pietro, and whipped bloody."

Her fear leaves her focused on nothing save d'Annunzio, her muscles tensing as she fights for control of her emotions and her body both; the young nun can't stop her ears from going crimson, heating with shame.

"Would you have me lose?" she murmurs, swiping blood from her mouth with the back of her hand. She stands firm, though her voice trembles, her thoughts fleeing and regrouping like flocks of starlings. "I must fight, Excellency."

"Fight?" the Vice Chief repeats. He sneers in irritation, his withering glare tempered only by the smug, imperious delight he takes in watching the girl cower before his displeasure.

His hands fist in the front of her habit, widening the tear at her shoulder and forcing her to stand on her toes to keep contact with the ground. His expression gives the lie to her mock bravado. She hasn't realized just how tall he is until this precise moment, her wide eyes staring evenly into his and her thin, irregular breaths fighting against his perfectly calm ones. "You fight vampires. You fight the enemies of God and the Church. You fight your own inequity and sin. But you will never raise a hand against me, Sister Paula. Is that perfectly clear? I want your obedience. I expect it, no... I _demand_ it.

"If it weren't for me, you'd be demon fodder..." he purrs, his gray-green eyes gleaming with satisfaction. "Though I don't suppose a skinny little wench like you would manage to fill a vampire's bed, nevermind his stomach. One'd have more success glutting either appetite with street whores or livestock. You're nothing, girl, unless you have a knife in your hand. And you're worthless to God and His Holiness if you don't have the scene of mind to use it properly."

She shrugs her shoulders, conquering the urge to shudder.

"Use it properly," Paula parrots, against every instinct of her better sense. Her terror gives way instead to a cold, patient logic. Despite the soft vehemence in her voice, there is a strange quietude in her eyes, a degree of simple, calm concession in her expression. "The Lord Himself will have His servants, and His graces, tried and exercised by difficulties. He never intended for us the crown of victory without a fight, nor a fight, Excellency..." she says, low and vinegar-bitter; she bears herself, then, with as much dignity as she can muster. Her dark eyes stare, unblinking, as she endeavors to pull herself erect and tug her tunic from his grasp. "_Without an enemy_."

Blindingly fast, d'Annunzio's arm jerks to the side and Paula finds herself snapping against the grass like suede doll, going boneless and limp from the shock of impact. The world somersaults as she struggles to stand, to see clearly, to dispel the haze and the pain from cracking her head on the gravel. Her vision swims as she crawls away, trying to get as far from the approaching shape as possible.

He kicks her in the ribs and the stomach; after a while, she finds the least she can do is tuck her chin close to her chest, to keep him from making contact with her aching head. She clenches her jaw to keep his steel-toed boot from cleaving her teeth through her tongue.

He rains blows on her as if he means to bury her in the ground. Bury her, and salt the earth. Her ribs, her thighs, her gut. And her face. Again and again and again. Careful blows, meant to inflict as much pain as possible without inflicting permanent damage.

If hatred were visible the air would be scarlet.

He stops only when a joint in his knee begin to creak.

He stares at her for a moment, his face set, his jaw clenched.

Then he smiles, tiny lines appearing around his mouth like cracks in plaster.

_"Jesteś okropną zdzirą, bezwartościowa w Boskich oczach..." _he hisses.

Then he turns and stalks off, towards the entrance of the basilica. Judith follows obediently at his heels.

Paula remains on the ground. Each breath comes cold, harsh, straining to contain her hatred and hurt.

She knows that there is incredible value in pain and suffering. Joy cannot exist without sadness. Relief cannot exist without pain. Compassion cannot exist without cruelty. Courage cannot exist without fear. Hope cannot exist without despair. Wisdom cannot exist without suffering. Gratitude cannot exist without deprivation.

The litany falls flat, however, hollow and unendurable. With the dew is soaking her scratchy wool vestments, and her body hurting everywhere, reminding herself of the necessity of suffering feels so _tiresome._

She lays still for what feels like hours, desperately angry but too sore to act on it, watching as the sun rises over Rome, silhouetting the big stone pines against a blood red sky...

When Paula joins Petros in the infirmary some time later, she tells Dr. Garibaldi she fell down the stairs.

* * *

The evenings mock the Papal Enclave with hints of rain –– a petrichor aroma in the air, a brief though blessed cooling of the skin, soundless lightning rendering the seven hills of Rome jagged silhouettes against the bruised clouds.

But when morning comes, the heat falls strong and lingers; the sun seems arrested in its course, the sulfurous air abandoned by dew and mist and rain. The city looks –– _feels_ –– thirsty; through the pine trees, shafts of hazy, humid sunshine form luminous motes of warmth along the Tiber, the water like a semi-molten mirror, cicadas ringing high and clear over the current's heavy wash.

For several long weeks, Saint Peter's Square is near barren; the white statues, as Sister Paula passes beneath their blank gazes, seem to her the real inhabitants of the Eternal City, while the sweaty, straggling pilgrims are little more than a swarm of ephemeral visitants infesting it for a day. The air is brazenly not, and every breath is an effort, every movement a struggle, every prayer sweat-stewed.

During her patrol, she watches penitents pay their court in the pomp of the massive doric colonnades, stretching their monotonous lengths around the Piazza; pilgrims worship wearily in the stifling air of the Basilica, urged by no fear or hope, but compelled by their faith to endure the rigidity of habit, as they endure the perpetual baking heat.

The Deputy Chief summons them to a small, subsidiary courtyard of the Palazzo del Sant'Uffizio one blistering summer afternoon. The ground smolders and sends up a disorientating haze. The birds are silent, the grass still, crunching underfoot, as if too dry to move. Around them, the palace and piazza are hushed, the corridors empty of footsteps. Paula's feeble shadow hides at her feet. She can smell the light musk of her own sweat, slick as oil between her muscles, which are tense and locked as the Deputy Chief walks back and forth along their ranks. Beside her, Petros appears to wilt with each passing moment, his hair hanging dripping in his eyes. His every breath comes out heavy and full of molten light, sweating drops of gold instead of brine. She wonders, idly, how Brother Jacob hasn't passed out under all his armor... occasionally, an inquisitor will grunt or shuffle his feet or adjust his greaves, but otherwise, they are all as quiet as apparitions, as though the yellowy stillness in the air is resistant to rupture.

"Were Galeazzo and Bona's bodies ever recovered?" His Excellency is asking Sister Simone, his smug, imperious voice, for once, hushed and wary. While Simone stands like a wax-work, scarcely more animated than San Pietro's statues, the Deputy Director paces madly, more motion in his body than in all of theirs put together. Sweat beads up in fat, white pearls across his forehead, each drop joining with the others until they run in thick, greasy rivulets back into his hair, soaking it as though he has been baptized.

"In a manner of speaking, Emanuele," supplies Simone dutifully, wielding with ease a familiarity that would have earned the rest of them a vicious tanning. "According to the Milanese authorities, there wasn't... a great deal of them left to recover. We were forced to cross-reference their remains with the dental records."

Paula senses Petros shifting his weight from foot to foot beside her, having trouble restraining his hellish temper. Though he is passionate and defiant, and she serene, carefully observant of authority, for once, she has some insight into his upset –– a wholesale railing against unspeakable violence enacted upon innocents.

Word of the tragedy in Milan was not long for reaching Rome's ears. Paula gleaned an account from the other novices before the Inquisition released its official statement: she remembers details of an enormous estate torn to pieces, devastated by the violence of the struggle, the household littered with corpses, so shredded they hardly resembled people anymore. According to the coroner's report, which eventually found its way to Sister Simone, a majority of the victims bled to death before help reached them.

The Milanese Questura accounted for at least fifteen dead servants and staff, and two butchered aristocrats...

The Duke and the Duchess.

"The Questura di Milano are being cooperative, I trust?"

"Insofar as circumstances allow, yes," says Simone, inscrutable. "It comes down to a question of security, Excellency. The city authorities cannot afford public confidence in defense to deteriorate, and are keen to keep the press, as well as outside agencies, as far from ground zero as possible. Certain policemen dared to suspect our representative of mounting a one-man crusade to bring the slaughter to the public's attention. However," Simone considers her next words carefully, lips pursed, "after His Holiness's formal revocation of bastardy, the Questura were willing to turn over the necessary information to the Bureau."

Sister Paula tries to puzzle out a hint of reproof or condemnation in Simone's tone, but soon gives up, _il Dottore's_ expression, as always, perfectly schooled and utterly opaque. An awkward silence follows, the implication behind Simone's words descending, with grave finality, into the thoughts of the assembled knights like stones in still water. The little part of Paula's mind that isn't drifting keeps fixing itself firmly on odd details, studying the precise shape of the crisping flower beds or the way the veins in the marble appear to form faces.

Anything to avoid looking the other inquisitors in the eye.

It is a well-known though seldom-acknowledged fact that His Holiness regards abstinence less as an ecclesiastical mandate and more like a motion put forward for consideration... the braver souls among the clergy estimate that he has fathered as many as eight illegitimate children, of whom he has acknowledged only one.

The lone survivor of the attack in Milan, Paula realizes, must be the second... which makes the entire situation the Inquisition's problem.

"What did Joanna find out?" prompts the Deputy Director.

"Nothing truly unprecedented; however, one of the servant's bodies was in fairly salvageable shape –– someone opened a vein in the woman's leg, and she bled to death. But there was no blood on her clothes. I checked with the _tenente_ in charge of the case, and allegedly, there was neither human nor vampire blood anywhere in the house –– nor on the grounds, nor in the surrounding area."

The Deputy Director grunts. "Unusual for those monsters... they tend to leave a mess."

"While the _modus operandi_ of the murders is consistent with other recorded vampire attacks, Excellency, the absence of blood –– as well as the disappearance of the belligerents themselves –– remains a mystery. The Director is currently in Milan looking into leads and taking witness statements."

"And what of the daughter?"

"Sister Joanna will be escorting the child and her guardian to Rome until such a time as a permanent security detail can be arranged."

"Guardian?" The Vice Chief frowns, fanning himself with a bladed hand. "I wasn't made aware of any guardian, Sister. According to the report, the entire Sforza household was exterminated."

"Be that as it may, Excellency, as you will see for yourself," Simone inclines her head towards the nearby arcade of columns, "it appears the young Lady has, in spite of recent tragedies, managed to secure a steward for herself."

The sunlight seems less intense now that Paula's eyes have adjusted. She glances across the courtyard. Beyond a retaining wall, she can distinguish the silhouettes of obelisks outlined against the horizon, the sun shining between them, hardening their edges. Three figures materialize from the shadows; Paula recognizes bespectacled, saturnine Joanna immediately: the other two, however, are strangers.

"My Lady," says the Deputy Director with irreproachable courtesy, giving a formal bow to the smallest of the new arrivals.

Paula catches her breath.

The girl is so beautiful that she glows like a painting of the Madonna, making everyone around her seem colorless in comparison. She is clearly a daughter of a grand house, donned in a dress of crimson, with sleeves billowing white, rubies and pearls spilling across her throat. Her eyes are pale gray, rich and radiant. Her golden hair shines with glints of red in the rays of the sunlight, the lavish lengths curled into perfectly proportioned corkscrews, much of it flowing loose over shoulders.

Paula catches the young lady's glance for a moment, registering the wise and sullen look of a not quite adolescent girl who knows too much.

"Vice Chief d'Annunzio," she says, regal and dignified, betraying nothing of grief or sadness, standing almost on her tiptoes in a derisive gesture of strength, "I thank you for the escort. I am pleased to finally make your acquaintance."

"The pleasure is mine, My Lady," he insists demurely, green eyes ostensibly friendly, but guarded. "I only regret our meeting could not have occurred under more auspicious circumstances. Allow me to offer the Bureau's most sincere condolences for your loss."

"The support of your department as well as the Curia is appreciated, Vice Chief."

"Are you certain you're unharmed, My Lady? It's astonishing –– dare I say miraculous –– how you were able to––"

"My nerves are a little rattled, as can be expected, but other than that, I'm fine." She catches his eye; she radiates a remarkable force of will that somehow conveys the impression of movement even when she is standing perfectly still. "I'm incredibly grateful that your inquisitors and everyone else worked so hard to bring me to Rome."

"The relief is ours, believe me. When we heard the news from Milan, we feared the worst. How were you able to avoid––"

"Being massacred?" The girl immediately takes to looking wary. "I'm sure after a few weeks have passed, or... perhaps a few years, when it's not so very fresh to me, I'll be able to discuss it in more detail."

"Of course. Forgive my interest. I make it my business to know how these monsters think, so that we may preclude the possibility of these sorts of tragedies happening again in the future."

The girl's caution immediately increases. "I'm not certain there's any need for that, Vice Chief. The danger to me has passed, which means I have no further need for your inquisitors. You and I are free to go on our merry ways –– and our separate merry ways, at that."

"I am afraid it is not that simple, My Lady. In light of your father's announcement––"

"_His Holiness's_ announcement," she corrects, scornful and contemptuous, "if you please. Regardless of the circumstances, I do most heartily disapprove of my family's personal affairs being brought up in polite conversation."

"You have my pardon, Duchess." In direct contradistinction to his words, the Deputy Director is almost hopping with impatience. "All the same, the perpetrators must be caught."

"Indeed? I hear your Director is currently in pursuit of the aggressors?"

"That is correct. No-Face is on their trail as we speak."

"Recall him."

A muscle twitches in d'Annunzio's jaw. Something shifts in his eyes, something so subtle Sister Paula sees it only because she knows what to look for. "With respect, My Lady, the security of the entire Papal State predicates upon––"

"I am sure the Questura di Milano are better suited to discussing the incident where security is concerned," states the girl coolly, in a tone which kills the subject dead. "Regardless, your officer will find nothing."

"He is not my officer, Duchess, he is my _superior_."

"You both operate in a complementary capacity, yes? And I am given to understand that a direct order from my uncle, Cardinal d'Este, would supersede the Director's independent investigation in any case."

Sister Paula can't help but marvel at the sheer theatricality of it all: the girl strutting, and the Deputy Director, at least twice her height, trying his damndest to match her poise, each playing to the audience like two old rivals struggling to upstage each other. Jockeying for the most dramatic position under the high, hot sun.

"Then am I to gather you have secured His Eminence's approval on this matter, My Lady?"

"I have a verbal assurance from the office of the Ministry of Doctrine; written authorization should not prove difficult to procure. Besides..."

"They... are gone. They're all gone."

The third figure drifts to the girl's side –– a young man of no more than twenty five, with long, glossy hair, so fine and fair it is almost white. Though he is gauche in movement, his face and frame starvation-thin, he is, admits Paula, breathtaking in appearance, his features ivory-pale and pristine, his brows so perfectly groomed and delineated they look like thin strips of gray velvet.

For a moment, the Deputy Director glares fiercely at the unknown interlocutor, as if wondering for a moment what the stone basin of the fountain might look like if he bashed the silver-haired man's head to a pulp on it.

The look passes as quickly as it arrives, and then d'Annunzio is once again all deference and charming smiles.

"I'm sorry," he says quietly, "I do not believe we have been introduced. You are Her Ladyship's manservant, I trust."

"He is my guardian," the girl corrects primly.

The silver head lowers in deference. The lines in the man's face are few but firm, as if they have been carved in marble. His eyes are crafty and kind, sad and sublime; the profound melancholy pales the color to an almost vitreous blue, giving him, even at so brief a glance, the bleached look of withered old age.

"He was able to rout the enemy from the estate," she informs the Vice Chief in light of her companion's silence.

"Miss Caterina..." protests the silver-haired man, grimacing, shoulders slumping in a slouch that appears a prayer in all but invocation for the cobbles to swallow him whole. Sister Paula watches nervous sweat bead on his forehead.

"While your department's timely response is appreciated as a matter of courtesy," the young Sforza heir goes on, not paying her companion any mind, "as a retaliatory strike, Deputy Director, it is unnecessary. My guardian here is more than capable of managing my security until the Curia makes other arrangements."

The aforementioned guardian can only splutter, and he stops even that when the young Duchess half turns to quirk an eyebrow –– the instinctive, indulgent gesture of a woman who knows what feeble creatures men can be.

The girl, Duchess Caterina Sforza, reminds Paula of the moon: the sinister, sun-bloodied moon of a lunar eclipse suspended in the depth of a stormy night –– crimson and gold torn from the sky.

The novice nun suppresses a shiver, unable to help but marvel at the Duchess's ability to convey her massive and mysterious intelligence in all its complexity, while maintaining an engaging –– and indeed, _charming _–– surface persona.

"I see," d'Annunzio murmurs, letting his breath hiss out between his teeth. "And does your _guardian_ have a name?"

The man smiles, then... a watery, unsure little thing, but perfectly sincere.

He says a name.

Something is... _strange_, about the silver-haired man. When he speaks, his inflections aren't quite right... either too flat or too loud by turns. He performs all the functions of a human, but clumsy and uncoordinated, his body dragging a few motions behind his mind. He seems to forget to blink. His gaze, uncommonly keen and a marked contrast to his awkward appearance, darts between his young charge and the Deputy Director until his eyes sting and then he rubs them, as though surprised by the irritation.

The Duchess Caterina doesn't smile, but Paula can hear the amusement in her voice: "There now. Introductions made, gratitude exchanged, formal offers of protection dispensed and denied."

Stiffening his resolve, and ignoring the mirthless glitter in the child's eyes, d'Annunzio manages a formal nod. "So you say, My Lady."

"And I really must commend this recent effort of the Inquisition's in taking the initiative." She suddenly looks a bit too knowing. "Not two hours after we dispense with our attackers, Sister Joanna appears on my doorstep propounding the Ministry of Doctrine's aid. It is an odd coincidence to be sure. The fact that my family's pedigree has long lead a progressive charge to update and liberalize aspects of Church doctrine –– in the face of fierce blowback from arch-conservatives, mind you –– certainly has little to do with it, naturally."

"I'm sure I have no idea what you could be suggesting," says the Deputy Director with forensic cold, once again put on the back foot by a mere fourteen-year-old.

"And I'm sure you know _exactly_ what I'm suggesting, Excellency. Nevertheless, since you seem unwilling to explain what prompted the Inquisition to extend the hand of goodwill on this occasion, we'll save the discussion for another time. I would be more than happy to debate the ambitions of principal men... ambitions which may well induce them to take advantage of these circumstances to perpetuate, perhaps, a hitherto temporary presence of militant Carabinieri forces in the sovereign Duchy of Milano?"

D'Annunzio freezes, eyes narrowing to mere slits as he meets the patient, though plainly accusing, gaze of the new Duchess of Milan. Though he may have been making a substantial effort at affecting patience, being addressed without deference by a tiny, dewy-eyed girl, irrespective of her lineage, is more than the Deputy Director's pride can bear. A tic springs to life in Emanuele's right eye.

In Paula's peripheries, Brother Petros's mouth drops open. Even Simone frowns.

The girl is _frighteningly_ clever, or the Deputy Director is disgustingly transparent.

Perhaps both.

The Vice Chief can't say a thing, and his silence speaks more than mere words ever could.

"Forgive me," says Sforza modestly, though she sounds neither demure nor particularly sorry. "A certain degree of paranoia has plagued me in the wake of my recent ordeal."

The tic goes nowhere. "No apology is necessary, My Lady."

Since she certainly doesn't have the least interest in prolonging conversation with the Deputy Director, she settles for stepping to his side, lifting her chin, and, with _remarkable_ insolence, reaching up to pat his cheek.

"My confidante here has been nattering on about sugary beverages since Milano Centrale, Excellency," she pipes musically, the sharp-eyed strategist packed away somewhere lead-lined and dark, until she is whisper-pale and soft-spoken once again. "Would you and Sister Joanna care to join us at the Palazzo Spada for a cup of tea? As thanks for your hospitality."

The Deputy Director remains silent for several seconds, as if trying to make up his mind whether he can bear to be in the girl's company one moment longer; but never one to lack for manners, d'Annunzio gives her another of his dignified half-bows, though Paula suspects he only does it to keep his expression veiled. "Alas, Sister Joanna has duties to attend to. However, if you would have me, My Lady, I would be honored. Perhaps the Palace of the Holy Office would be more convenient, to keep My Lady from having to endure this interminable heat."

"How very thoughtful of you, Excellency. Shall we go then?"

"After you, Duchess." And then, to the assembled knights, he barks: "Dismissed."

Paula watches the Deputy Director and his odd contingent of guests disappear inside the Palazzo del Sant'Uffizio; she doesn't move for a long while, unmindful of the sweat soaking through her heavy wool habit and the the sun burning the hair on her scalp to a crisp.

The girl who entered the conversation –– the child of murdered parents and the survivor of the most vicious domestic vampire attack in decades –– was a delicate thing... fragile, fussy, a bit melancholy upon occasion, and too beautiful for words. While the Lady Caterina Sforza's beauty is even more impressive upon a closer inspection, that is seemingly the _only_ thing Paula has gotten right about the girl.

She is not delicate in the least, and doesn't appear to possess a melancholy demeanor, in spite of her personal tragedy.

The young Duchess is _strong_. Strong and sturdy and so breathtakingly intelligent she gives even Paula pause for thought. Neither the grandeur of their surroundings nor the tens of curious gazes seem to disturb her composure. She is so polished and immaculately presented that no one suspects the layer of steel beneath her exterior.

Paula comes to the abrupt realization that she and Caterina Sforza are the same age. But her features are dainty where Paula's are severe. Hers is a glamor rooted in imperiousness and privilege, a perfected otherness. She is too many things at once –– a child, a noblewoman, a politician, a Duchess. Paula herself is not too many things, but too few.

The nun remembers the Duchess's keen-edged gray eyes, her unrelenting accusation paired with irreproachable courtesy, and a part of Paula is _terrified... _sick to her stomach with a sudden swoop of vague, itinerant emotion.

Paula cannot ignore the feeling that she has just witnessed _something_ being born... something that will change everything.

She begins to back away, rubbing her eyes as if to keep tears from her face, when a tall, lumbering figure snags in her peripheries...

_Petros._

His mouth is still hanging open. He stands rooted to the spot and, like her, seemingly impervious to the relentless heat.

"Brother Petros?" she queries quietly, keeping her odd foreboding from making itself known in her expression. "Are you all right?"

He is, she realizes, looking in the direction of the Duchess's group with enraptured eyes. Though they have by that point long departed, something about their number appears to excite the older novice, if his furiously flushing face is any indication. She worries for a space of a few seconds whether he might be suffering from acute heat stroke before he ventures an uncommonly hushed:

"Who was that with her?"

Paula takes a deep breath, looking askance at her partner. "Nobody knows. An attache of the household, perhaps."

"He had such blue eyes. Like..." he blinks rapidly, frowning fiercely, frustration with himself evident in the cement clench of his jaw, "like a lake in winter...

"They... they were so beautiful."

He voices the observation somewhat faintly, as though reading Latin aloud from his missal –– guessing, questing, inventing meanings for himself, intoxicated by the ambiguous rush of significance.

As if he cannot yet decipher the reasons behind the uncertainty himself –– at least, not with his eyes or his brain.

As if he is... _enamored_ of the strange, silver-haired man...

A deeper understanding of the feeling, Paula suspects, requires an emotional faculty Petros does not yet know he possesses –– a cipher couched in empathy, a mechanism by which to make sense of the inherent contradiction fundamental to the young Duchess's companion –– the haughty superiority of some infinite reserve...

Coupled with the mystery of some infinite sadness.

"He said his name was Abel..." she murmurs.

_"Abel Nightroad."_

* * *

It is four in the morning when they leave the haven of travertine-paved squares and circular colonnades. Before long, their path turns steeply uphill, and they're forced to traipse up the long flight of steps cut roughly into the stone of the Passetto di Borgo. They emerge at the base of the most feared building in all of Christendom.

Castel Sant'Angelo –– connected to San Pietro Basilica by means of the Passetto's half-mile-long fortified corridor –– is a towering cylindrical fortress erected on the west bank of the Tiber. The stronghold is a circle surrounded by a square, each corner protected by a barbican. The lofty cylinder of the interior houses the Inquisition's proving grounds and the inner courtyard where capital punishment is meted out, as well as the torture chambers and prison cells, buried deep beneath the Cortile della Balestra.

As the two figures, a tall monk and a significantly shorter nun, reach the top of the passage, the wind suddenly and violently increases, blasting straight off the river. Sister Paula shuffles closer to a wall of meter-high stone at the edge of the fortress's lawns, between the passage and the drop over the battlements, and she hunkers down in the lee of it, thankful for the shelter.

A driving rain roils against the slate-gray Tiber, peeling out from beneath the curtain walls of the Castel Sant'Angelo. The clouds hang low, and the rocks lay lodged like hymns in the breast of the river; the trees along the Lungotevere Castello and the Lungotevere degli Altoviti on the opposite shore crook upwards in condemnation, akin to mangled fingers.

As Paula marches across the proving grounds, her boots crunch on burnt wadding from past artillery and firearms exercises. In the warmer seasons, the parade grounds of the Castel San'Angelo are a mire, continually recast into chaotic depressions by the passage of soldiers and the treads of lumbering military vehicles. Now, under the icy rain, the mud lies in frozen ruts, each deep enough to twist an ankle and obscure a sizable puddle from view. To each side rest steep embankments of rock and thin trees, intended to affect a plethora of variegated combat terrain during training exercises, and, incidentally, giving the monk and the nun little choice but to battle over the path.

It is early, and the air is cold, like a knife against the back of her neck. Paula slips and slithers on litters of stones and frozen mud. The glaring cornea of the sun has not yet risen, and the raindrops fall silver, as bleak and brilliant as splintered ice. The city, sunk in mist, is stiff with a bitter, brittle frost. The black hollows between the trees, the low-linteled windows of the castle, look bottomless.

She pulls her cowl tight around her, her heavy coat growing prickly as the wool absorbs the moisture. The mere sight of the infamous fortress chills her to the core, causing her teeth to chatter like castanets.

Paula pauses briefly and looks up, fixating on the bronze statue of the Archangel Michael, frozen forever in the act of wiping blood from his sword.

There is an intense anxiety in the deluge, as if between the tumbling cloud and the earth each raindrop is fearful, like Paula, of eventually reaching its destination. The sound alone is enough to make her chest rise and fall more precipitously than it might have done otherwise.

A sharp scent billows across the grounds, wafting in the rain, like acetone but less pungent.

"What in blazes is that?"

Paula peers sidelong at her companion. Petros's nose puckers as he takes a long drag of the acrid scent.

"Why are you asking me?" she murmurs, too damp and disquieted to care that she sounds snappish. "I know as much about this summons as you do."

Which is to say, she affirms to herself, absolutely nothing.

Petros's beaky expression grows grave, his eyes lighting unnervingly. "Paula," he ventures quietly –– his uncharacteristic hush is evidence enough that he is being deadly serious: "Could it have something to do with... you know... that girl who went missing..."

"The pilot," intuits Paula, sensing his meaning. "The one from Albion."

He nods, dislodging the blue hair plastered to his forehead and throwing raindrops in every direction. "You've heard the rumors... a dogfight above the Castel Gandolfo. According to Judith, the Carabinieri patrolling the central region near the Lago Albano have been ordered to take all measures necessary to keep details from leaking to the public."

The closer they draw to the looming fortress, the more Paula suspects her partner has the meat of it: if the Inquisition were to carry out its own covert investigation of the incident, d'Este and d'Annunzio would hold any suspects in the Castel Sant'Angelo for questioning, far away the public eye and well outside the jurisdiction of the Roman civil courts.

Out of sight, out of mind.

"Are you surprised? This is the second major breach of the Holy See's security in as many years, Brother Petros. The Vatican's influence with the secular states is waning. His Holiness can ill afford the bad publicity."

"Have you noticed... both incidents involved that Milanese aristocrat." He stuffs his hands into his sopping pockets, head down, almost talking to himself. He strides ahead, his long legs quicker than hers.

She attempts to catch up. "It had crossed my mind, yes. She's a student at the Gregoriana now, is she not?"

"Indeed. In addition to her coursework, I hear she intends to take holy orders." Paula thinks she sees a glint of calculated deviltry in his eyes, slightly self-satisfied. "_And_ I hear the Lady Sforza's marks are _almost_ as good as yours."

"In luring contraventions of national security, however, she stands alone."

He snorts in jest. _"Saccente."_

_"Głupiec,"_ she throws back.

Petros grimaces, and ventures, his accent lamentable: _"Mój polski to śmieć."_

_"Eppure... parlo e scrivo un italiano perfetto."_

"Well then... provided the Lady Sforza was not in the Lazio hills for your estimable Italian lessons, Sister Paula," huffs Petros grudgingly, though he is not so affronted that he doesn't flash her a wide, white smile, "that still begs the question of what she was doing at the Castel Gandolfo..."

"It is not so great a mystery as you seem to think. I wager she was visiting her father."

Repeated attempts to broach the subject have taught Paula that any and all mentions of Caterina Sforza's biological parentage have a tendency to turn Petros's fair complexion redder than Rome's roof-tiles. She doesn't know whether his derivative embarrassment stems more from a conservatively-minded religious outrage or a boyish awkwardness. The former is the more popular –– albeit, privately acknowledged –– sentiment among the other inquisitors, though Paula finds the latter possibility, despite exposing a certain naivety, oddly endearing.

"Whatever her reasons for being there," she goes on smoothly, to break the suddenly cumbersome silence –– she is aware that some delicacy is required if she is to continue with this line of conversation, of which she possesses little and Petros, none at all, "the fact remains that another aggressor was able to infiltrate deep into Papal State territory and commit acts of terrorism specifically targeting Lady Caterina Sforza. Though she managed to come out of both incidents ostensibly unscathed, like the attack in Milan two summers ago, there were not insignificant casualties."

Petros expression grows steadily more solemn with her every word. "That those _monsters_ should catch us unawares a second time...!" he growls. "It's disgraceful. More, it projects weakness on the part of the entire Holy See!"

"Are we certain they hailed from the Empire?"

She receives from Petros a small exhalation of breath and a curious inclination of one eyebrow. "Who else could it be?"

"We have no evidence."

"We are the Vatican, and they are vampires. _Ab uno disce omnes..."_

_"Auctoritas non veritas facit legem,"_ counters Paula.

Petros pulls a face, recognizing the citation. "I don't like Hobbes," he grumbles, pouty and petulant. "He argues in favor of an absolute sovereign, if I remember correctly. _Once the king becomes king, he cannot be overthrown and obtains absolute power_... or some such. Arrogant old so-and-so... the only true ruler is God, and only He is Eternal."

"Let hair-splitters conspire, Brother Petros; we must act on reason."

"_Cessante ratione legis cessat ipsa lex_. Human law is fallible and transient, Sister Paula."

She quotes Hobbes and he ripostes with the canon law of the _Decretum_. His is the most irritating species of intelligence –– shrewd and stubborn.

"But God's Law is nature itself," he finishes firmly, "which is equitable to all His creatures. However, if a creature is Fallen..."

"He forfeits the Lord's just treatment... for he is in sin," she muses. "Conditional egalitarianism." In the interests of preserving harmony, she keeps her objections to herself. "You sound almost Lockean."

Paula goes quiet for a while, turning over her partner's words, trying to align his insights with what scant details she herself knows about the situation.

A few days ago, a number of civilians reported a terrible explosion and a gigantic column of water and steam shooting out of the Lago Albano. Inquisition dirigibles and Carabinieri aircraft dispatched from Rome, the Assisi Air Base, and the Castello di Signa in Tuscany descended on the site, but by the time the Vatican authorities arrived the aggressor was long gone. The only indication of an altercation having taken place was the surface of the lake, black with oil and littered with the debris of a small aircraft, the rudder in ruins and the fuselage torn to pieces.

Since the original report, chains of Carabinieri patrols have ringed off the roads into and out of the Alban Hills, and the Minister of the Doctrine, Cardinal d'Este, has gone so far as to cut short an important inspection to hurry back to Rome.

The subsequent media blackout has been swift. Violent death is not, in itself, wholly unusual in a world plagued by the likes of vampires. Grisly details can be abused, however, and stories spun. The tabloids and more subversive papers have already intimated at using the facts to their advantage, if any are to be had. The papal authorities tend not to tolerate any incursions into what they regard as their exclusive province –– the spread of information being one such example. And to that end, official press releases by the Propaganda Fide continue to vehemently deny any incident having occurred _at all _and, instead, put forward an account alleging the debris of the downed craft came from a small commercial boat, the destruction of which was caused by a mine in the lake, a relic from the Dark Times.

The Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, Paula thinks with disdain, are long overdue for a turnover in leadership, for despite their best efforts, the papers continue to carry some highly alarming rumors.

What is worse, several eagle-eyed clergy have noted that, among the Lady Caterina Sforza's usual entourage of classmates and close acquaintances, one face in particular –– a perennial companion of the young Duchess, an Albionian woman with heavy eyelids hanging at half mast –– is conspicuously absent.

The young woman in question is –– perhaps _was_ –– a fellow student at the Gregoriana, a close friend of Lady Sforza, a former cadet of the Royal Air Force in Albion...

And the best flyer of a generation.

A Curia tripping over itself in damage control, aircraft wreckage strewn halfway across Lazio, and a missing pilot.

The evidence is damning. Still...

"Why Caterina Sforza?"

Petros's face reddens again, unattractively blotched by the predawn chill. "Either the girl is extraordinarily unlucky."

"Or..."

"Or..." he crosses his arms and casts a judicial eye over the sodden lawn. His reply is slow in coming and deliberately worded so as to be as oblique as possible: "She is courting it."

Paula frowns. "I somehow doubt she coveted the death of her parents and, quite possibly, one of her closest friends."

"Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap," booms Petros, Galatians coming to him as reflexively as blinking. "You saw how she conducted herself in the presence of the Deputy Director two summers ago! Lady Sforza spells trouble for the Inquisition." He rolls his head and stretches his arms as though preparing for a boxing match, then intones severely, the mortar-like grinding of his voice somehow managing to make the note of accusation all the more evident: "Mark my words."

"Consider them marked," she murmurs.

"Her misfortune certainly hasn't worked in our favor so far as assignments are concerned," he goes on, glaring at the ground. "I must have an inch of rainwater in my boots. And what," he snarls, spinning in place so quickly his elbow almost catches Paula in the side of the head, "is that wretched smell?"

"Ferrous compounds." The recognition breaks free from her; she feels overcome, suddenly, with an inexplicable sense of unease. "It's iron."

"Iron? Then why does it smell..." he bares his teeth in distaste, "_spoilt_."

Iron... _blood..._

Wellspring and waste product. The beginning and the end. In the midst of life we are in death. Et cetera.

Paula shudders and hunches her shoulders, attempting entirely in vain to stave off both the chill air and the creeping dread. A disquietude vaster and sourer than mere foreboding sweeps through her, sucking on her skin like a limpet clinging to a submerged rock. The silver rain seemed so indifferent as it drenched the obelisk and pilasters back in Saint Peter's Square, and an hour ago she took this as affirmation that the Lord would not abandon His follower to the darkness.

It seems a hollow omen now, with the light stolen by the looming silhouette of San'Angelo, and the rain falling faster and colder than before.

"Petros?"

"Hmm?"

With an almost painfully hoarse whisper that seems to drag itself from the pit of her stomach and fight its way to her throat, Paula mutters: "That smell... I think it's rhodium-plated silver and iron... boiling blood..."

She swears she can hear his heart beating, thundering at an erratic rhythm. "Silver chains! But why...?"

_Stupid question. _"I think..." she begins, spying a congregation of shadowy figures across the proving grounds –– Paula remains calm, lucid and balanced. Surprisingly so, given the shock she feels: "I think the Deputy Director may have found his suspects after all..."

Then she sees _them_.

Their feet and hands are bound in silver chains, and she can hear the greasy hiss of frying meat and muscle even at a distance. They are restrained, some blindfolded, all of them gagged. They sit shivering in the rainy predawn air, stripped to their skins, forced to weather the indignity until the inquisitors are content that their inconsequential nudity poses no threat. Paula finds herself looking for signs of horrific mutation or malformation... skin lesions, deformities, supernumerary eyes and genitals. Aside from their wrists and ankles, however, which are red and raw with open wounds from the silver, the prisoners appear perfectly ordinary, if desperately unwashed and undernourished. It takes a newfound proximity for her to intuit a certain... _wrongness_ about them. A set to their shoulders –– not hunched away from the inquisitors, she notices, but from the eastern horizon, the provenance of the rising sun –– a protuberance in their jaws from their fangs, a gimleted light in their eyes, an unnatural sense of otherness that makes the human stomach slightly sick with a fear it can't quite name. Someone near the center of the thinning group is sobbing –– the sort of guttural sound an animal might make, breath drawn over raw vocal cords in heaving gulps.

It is the first time Sister Paula has seen a vampire.

She makes the mistake of looking to her left: she spies, at the edge of the clearing, a mass of cloth and flesh, crumpled and unnaturally posed. In the pile, individual limbs are barely recognizable as such. One leg sticks out at an angle, twisted halfway down the calf. An arm, chapped and purple, flops limply at the top of the stack, rainwater dripping from its fingertips. She takes a breath and immediately regrets it, the stench curdling in her nose. The air stinks of iron and silver and urine, like an abattoir after a cull.

Her understanding turns her stomach as acutely as physical nausea.

Deputy Director d'Annunzio has summoned them to an execution.

Weak torches reveal a small, select group of knights and Swiss Guardsmen pressed against a damp battlement of stone, the walls wet and reflecting the light. Emanuele stands with his hands in the pockets of his long greatcoat, a soaked galero on his head, rainwater pouring from its brim and puddling in the grass at the Deputy Director's feet. The other knights are deathly silent and absolutely solemn; only the Vice Chief, presiding over the lurid theater, wears a look of patent unconcern.

In the darkness at the core of the Castel Sant'Angelo, as Petros and Paula draw close to their quarry, the rain falls sullen and slanted, the clouds sweeping across the sky like the beating of a vast black wing, stirred by a wind that chafes the bones of bare branches and rattles the firs so they shake like giant fists.

"Paula..." breathes Petros, too quiet for anyone save her to hear him. The tips of his fingers brush her sleeve. _"Buon Dio in cielo..."_

"We have trained for this," she murmurs. _"Raccogli il tuo coraggio almeno una volta." _With great dignity she disengages Petros's hand from her clothing. She looks beyond him, as if into the light of revelation, taking a deep quaff of the chill morning air. She says, very quietly, "Do your duty."

She senses him tear his gaze free, as though to acquiesce to the truth of her words. By that time, however, the Deputy Director has motioned to a pair of Swiss Guards, and the two men lope towards Brother Petros and Sister Paula with the rolling stride of men more accustomed, she suspects, to saddles. One officer hands her his hunting knife, and the other surrenders to Petros an enormous reach weapon. It is a strange device –– a massive silver lance with a dual rotor assembly on either end of the shaft, the teeth of the engines serrated and the radiating airfoils parring-knife sharp.

Petros does not bother asking what d'Annunzio expects him to do with it. "May we hear final confession?" he asks instead, brutalizing the solemn quiet with the overloud petition.

"That will not be necessary," says the Deputy Director, poised and glacial. "I'll not have these monsters taint the consecrated elements of the Eucharist, nor will they be permitted to petition for penance."

"With what crime have they been charged?"

A snort of amusement. "You are not here to make a decision concerning a defendant on a legal matter, Brother Petros," drawls the Deputy Director, but she can hear the faint strain in his voice, "you are here to act as executioner."

Petros rankles; Paula can almost see lank strands of blue lifting from the top of his head, can hear the crunch of his knucklebones beneath the downpour. It is not the execution itself he finds so distasteful, but rather the deftness and ease with which the Deputy Director pushes the solemn responsibility on his subordinates. She knows Petros; he does not expect of his own peers a sacrifice he cannot in good conscience countenance. He does not force others fight in conditions he would refuse to fight in himself.

And he _never_ asks a man to perform a task he would not soil his own hands doing.

Paula's own distaste is more procedural in nature. The entire spectacle has an impression of maladroit impulsiveness about it, overhasty and untidy. The Inquisition usually sanctions public displays of capital punishment due to their capacity for deterrence; they give the state the chance to display its power before those who fall under its jurisdiction. Executions carried out behind closed doors are rare... and suspicious.

The Inquisition has a ministerial duty to forward the authorization orders to the Pope, who considers each appeal for clemency and who, ultimately, is the one to sign the execution warrant. In bygone times, recalls Paula, the condemned had the traditional right to see His Holiness's signature on the physical document before being led to the pyre.

Paula intuits that the nature of the attack in Lazio –– in particular, the virulence of the media firestorm that has erupted in the wake of the Propoganda Fide's ham-fisted handling of it –– necessitates a certain discretion: His Holiness will have his justice, of that she is certain, but the Vatican need not prostrate itself before the fetish of public shame and disgrace in the effort of securing it.

These executions are a private affair. Moreover, under d'Annunzio's term, the ceremony is less... dignified. A single telephone call had, no doubt, gone out from the Castel Sant'Angelo or the Palazzo del Sant'Uffizio to the Pope in San Pietro: _The Holy Father has turned down the appeal for clemency_ –– a single statement from the Camerlengo suffices to rubber-stamp a facsimile of the Pope's signature on the execution warrant.

Denied Confession and Viaticum, barred from the administration of the last rites, and deprived, ultimately, of even the Holy Father's ministry... Paula can think of a no more brutal affront to a living creature's pride and dignity.

She wonders, idly, who these poor wretches really are... if they even had _anything_ to do with the attack on the Duchess. But it is not the first time the Inquisition has employed a systematic use of coerced confession in the interest of extracting public recantations, for purposes both counter-informational and otherwise.

Paula doesn't suppose it really matters in any case: they are vampires. No other class of evidence is so profoundly prejudicial.

The Vice Chief gestures at the bruised and bleeding creatures, crushed in, sobbing their fear, staring with bulging, hateful, terrified eyes. "Well then... best get on with it, Brother Petros... Sister Paula. Before this accursed rain worsens."

The Deputy Director gives one of the foundlings a firm kick in the back of its knees, causing it to lose its balance. The second kick is to its temple, sending the whey-faced little thing sprawling until it lands, with a muted whimper, directly at Paula's feet.

It is holding its face –– a broken nose from the heel of someone's boot, Paula suspects –– the blood soaking through its fingers and flowing over its hand and onto its sleeve.

The hand flops, and a face resolves itself before her: a girl of twelve or thirteen, a scant few years younger than she is –– an ironic kind of torment in of itself –– but wasted to the point of decrepitude. Brittle scrags of hair sprout from a pockmarked scalp. A collection of sores cluster on one side of the mouth. Its eyes are fevered and horrifically bloodshot. The effect is that of accumulated, chronic illness rather than of some actual disease. There is a mark of some final _extremis_ upon it, Paula thinks: the sense of a life lived long past the point of running out and containing nothing whatsoever to lose.

The tiny vampire is sobbing openly. The girl looks at her with wide, terrified eyes. "Mercy, Sister, please..." it begs.

Paula stares at her weapon, the knife's edge catching the torchlight, a harbinger of bloodshed.

"Please... please..."

The vampire blanches, and its puckered mouth opens, forming a round black oval filigreed with its sharp, needle-like incisors. An unearthly yowl tears from its throat, the whole of the courtyard ringing with the creature's pitiful baying.

"Do be quiet," murmurs Paula, before she calmly, efficiently, slits its throat.

_In the midst of life we are in death. _

It is a little like removing a set of earplugs in a room filled with the roar of machinery. A gurgle issues from the foundling's damaged mouth instantly, a barrage of sound, seemingly without pause or need for breath. Some part of Paula –– some wishful part –– expects the Deputy Director to step forward to put the poor wretch out of its infernal misery, but the man merely regards them both without any particular expression.

And then the sounds simply... stop.

Paula leaves the body where it falls.

Then they bring another.

And another.

The Deputy Director has the guards parade the remains of the coven before her, instructing her again and again to slit their throats with her silver blade. Every time, she has to look them in their eyes and see the hatred, the terror, the anguished confusion before she cuts them down. Some suffer a variety of abreactive shock, muscles locked and immobile, while others grow instantly and murderously hysterical. The uproar is appalling... so very human in their protests. The more desperate, those who would otherwise rigidly deny any faith, turn and offer up terrified pleas to God before they die.

For all the good it does them.

The bodies pile up.

Paula's hand moves on its puppet string.

And her mind screams until it finally loses its voice.

The world is so big, so complicated, so replete with marvels and miracles; and yet, that morning, it takes her no time at all to understand that it is, also, irretrievably broken.

Human beings are hungry, cruel creatures –– possessed, seemingly, of an inexhaustible wellspring of brutality, an inextinguishable proclivity for violence. As she kills them, it occurs to her that it hardly matters to her victims whether the executions are intended to exact God's divine justice or accrue political ammunition or salve the Holy Father's shame. The _reason_ –– the accursed _logic_ –– is of no importance to the poor brute with its lifeblood soaking into the mud. Death is death, no matter the mechanism employed to beget it.

To them, she is no more righteous, no more divinely impelled, than those apostates who are violent solely from expedience, who believe in no higher law than the desire to glut their lust for torture.

Faith and unbelief are cultural variables, but killing is a human constant.

Paula feels pain at the realization; it is a deep, desperate hurt, a wound with no blood to show for it, save that which she spills.

Brother Thaddeus, one of the rarefied Knights for whom she has harbored a private contempt since she was twelve years old, slices through his batch easily, tidy and efficient. The others follow suit.

All except Petros.

He stands at arm's length from his target –– a boy no older than ten, dull-eyed, near-catatonic with fear. Petros aims the lance at the child's head, but something is stopping him from wheeling the deadly rotor blades. Paula sees how his hands are trembling. She sees the outrage in his gaze. He inhales sharply, and his body begins to shake with primitive fury.

His Excellency lofts an eyebrow. "Is there a problem?"

Petros licks his lips. "He's a child." He looks at his superior and his eyes are bright with accusation, his expression thunderous._ "He's a child!"_

Paula peers at the figure, kneeling in the shady weeds. The boy has a pockmarked face, its skin white and cracked like rice paper, lent color only by a livid purple bruise on its cheek. Its ash-blonde hair is matted black with dried blood. What she can see of its hands is callused with hard, dry skin.

In one fist, it clutches the remnants of a rosary, the string broken and the beads now lying next to it in the dirt.

The expression in its eyes holds such fierce horror that it is almost enough to freeze the blood in her veins.

And still Petros stands with hands clenched, the blood rushing to his face, angry, bitter tears starting in his eyes.

Paula shudders.

_He can't do it._

_He can't kill this boy..._

For someone of his station to cull the derelict and prodigal –– those wretched souls who have willingly and without remorse shunned Divine Providence –– would be, in a very real sense, the most purely practical of impulses.

But for him to be able to see in this vampire foundling, this _child, _not only something of worth but indeed something of salvation, the potential to be cherished and welcomed into God's covenant, is the rarest and most ennoblingly stupid faculty to ever take root within his heart.

Kind, stubborn fool, thinks Paula, in awe and despair.

Ultimately, he waits too long.

A red-gold glow bursts suddenly across the sky, the edge of dawn appearing over the nearest battlement, breaking through the rain-limned sky.

The fledgling's legs and arms glisten like tongues of living fire, flesh erupting in keloids as it writhes and twists in even the weakest rays of sunlight. Its mouth, a gash in the caricature of a human head, slavers white spittle. She hears its breath whimper in its throat, the sunlight scalding its vocal cords until the sound dies stillborn in its blistered chest.

Without a word, Paula lowers herself to her knees and slides her long hunting knife from its sheath by her hip. With the point of the blade hovering over the boy's heart, she murmurs a tiny prayer under her breath. The knife sinks easily into the child's chest. The tiny figure goes mercifully still.

In a daze, Petros stares at the boy, charred almost beyond recognition, the clothing fused to the blackened remains, the tiny, brittle skeleton visible where the flesh has split. The head is a dark wreck of bone and cartilage, teeth grinning up at the sky. The body crumbles like charred paper, flaking to the ground. The wind carries the ashes and scatters them across the silver of the dew-speckled grass

"All creatures have the right to a merciful death," she says gently, to Petros, her head drawing close to his until strands of their hair intermingle: blue and silver. "You mustn't let your cowardice cause them suffering."

Retching suddenly and dryly, the sound almost a sob, Petros sinks to his knees beside the body.

The sudden conflagration quenches something inside him, like fire tearing oxygen from searing lungs, leaving his innards arid. Empathy shriveled and emotion scorched, the emptiness left behind is bereft of both foreseeable hope and conceivable forgiveness.

It occurred. It _happened_. Nothing will ever be the same.

Their actions have blighted them.

Sins are wounds, not stains... huge black scars that last forever. The lacerations on their souls will never heal, she knows. A unconscious kind of self flagellation holds the rends wide open. Before, the gaping holes might have sent her into a state of panic so severe that she would dread to look upon them.

Now, gone is the horror, and in its place, a dull, persistent pain that sits like a stone in her stomachs.

Absolution, for the both of them, will never be enough.

_We are damned..._

Over her shoulder, she can hear Deputy Director d'Annunzio's sneer.

"Brother Thaddeus, if you wouldn't mind..."

"Excellency."

There is no time for her to react.

Brother Thaddeus, thin and reedy but twice her size, grabs her arm and whips it behind her shoulder blade; she hears a crunch and a snap, and he drives his knee into her back, sending her crashing to the ground.

She doesn't scream.

Petros's eyes shoot open, burning, as though with fever. "Paula!"

She feels her hair snatched with such force her scalp burns. Thaddeus drags her upright until her chest bows off the ground, his grip so tight and the pain so intense that she finds herself having to fight to stay conscious. She squirms, stilling when the older Knight gives her hair an explicatory yank.

"Brother Thaddeus," orders d'Annunzio crisply, the embodiment of professional composure.

"Excellency."

"If Brother Petros is not on his feet in three seconds, gauge out Sister Paula's eye." He considers her for a moment. "Her right one, please... it wouldn't do to damage the vision of her dominant side."

"Excellency...!" chokes Petros, paling in horror.

"But be clean about it. The girl's never been entirely unpleasant to look at. It wouldn't do to leave a gaping hole in her face..."

She does not feel panicked, though she knows, somewhere, she is. Paula registers only anger, cold and hard and immediate, a faintly metallic burning in her mouth like a freezing coin placed under her tongue. The agony of Thaddeus's grip increases and she closes her eyes in resignation. As she silently wills the pain to end, she recognizes the words running through her mind, perhaps even mumbled aloud:

"Holy Mary, Mother of God..."

Fury heats the very air she breathes.

A hand shoots out of nowhere –– Petros's hand, she realizes a moment after it happens –– and slams into Thaddeus's startled face. She hears the wet crunch and splinter as the heel of Petros's palm strikes Thaddeus's nose, with a force that very likely breaks the bone. The Knight staggers, his hand going to stopper the gore, but he does not fall. Thaddeus curses the air blue. Paula feels herself pitch forward.

The battle lines within her partner have been drawn. The boundaries of faith rise up around the rage, too late to warn his soul against righteous anger transmuting into bloodlust.

Something seems to snap, then, in Brother Petros.

The ensuing fight, if Paula can even call it that, is nothing short of brutalization, like taking a hammer to glass. Snarling, Petros swipes at the thinner man furiously. Thaddeus is immediately on the defensive, stutter-stepping across the grass. An electrified cosh drops from his sleeve and he swings it in a short chopping blow at Petros's eyes. The latter manages to turn his head just enough that it lashes the side of his face instead. Blood pours from his ear. Thaddeus's arm retracts, and the lean black cane just misses Petros's kneecaps as the latter leaps over the arc of Thaddeus's swing, impossibly high for someone his size, before twisting in midair like a cat in freefall. Petros's lance lashes out, forcing Thaddeus to pitch his weight forward to keep his head from being blown clean off his shoulders.

Petros snaps the lance in half, the shaft detaching at the center. He strikes twice, dual-wielding the high-frequency wheels. Bearing down on the hapless Brother Thaddeus, Petros activates one of the engines, the teeth of the rotor blades catching on the other Knight's nightstick and causing it to flip end over end through the air; Petros powers the second engine in time to snap the spinning weapon in half across the hilt. Allowing the momentum from the engines' kick to carry him over the damp grass, Petros spins, his back to Thaddeus as he flips the halves of the lance in two backhanded grips and powers the engines to full revolution, the twin toroids pile-driving Thaddeus into the ground.

Paula watches Petros bearing down, his face contorted in rage, his eyes a lucent, ice blue, his attacks wild and powerful and so, so dangerous. Thaddeus goes for a small knife at his belt, but Petros's lance knocks the hilt to the side with an upward slash so strong that it sends the already reeling Thaddeus staggering, unable to recover.

Petros wheels the lance's engine a third time. A supercompressed vortex of air carves a trail from Thaddeus's stomach to his collar bone. His scream of pain only lasts a second, his chest heaving and each labored breath bringing blood to his lips. Petros covers the remaining distance in one loping stride and thrusts the lance close to Thaddeus's throat. The rotor teeth bite through his shoulder and cleave a line straight down his back, so deep it nearly saws him in half. The blow shatters his clavicle and breastbone and sends him jacknifing through the air. He lands hard, his back smashing against a jutting lump of rock. The impact makes a sound like a dropped pumpkin.

Thaddeus does not move. Neither does Petros.

The only sound is the rain.

It falls fat and slow, the drops the size of olive pits, a steady, staticky background sound like an old radio coming to life.

Paula turns her face to the dark sky. The water streams through her hair, down her neck, soaking her clothes. She doesn't know how long she sits there, her upper body brought forward and down towards the mud; time seems to stop as the early morning rain tapers to a chilly haze, as though the very drops are hovering, frozen in midair. The wind goes quiet, the roaring in her head ceases; after an untold number of minutes, she registers the sound of heavy breathing, monotonous and regulated, dreadful and awful.

Petros wrenches himself from his fugue with an animal moan of despair, a long, lonely, miserable sound… a lowing of anguish so deep and dreadful Paula is herself unable to lend it voice...

So he voices it for both of them.

He recoils from Thaddeus's prone form in revulsion, his gray face contorting with a horror that seems so endless that the mere movement of muscles and mouth can never do it justice. He flings the lance across the lawn and falls to his knees, his hands clenching convulsively and his diaphragm spasming, desperate to be sick into the grass but finding nothing in his stomach to void.

"Magnificent. Like putting the lash to a lion's hide..."

The Vice Chief steps over Thaddeus's body. Petros holds his ground, even though Paula can see his every sinew in his throat straining... perhaps to scream.

There is a sinister delight in the Deputy Director's green eyes, a _satisfaction_ that exalts Paula to a height of hatred she has never known before.

D'Annunzio steps forward, watching as Petros's shoulders slump, the corded muscles of his back and shoulders trembling. The Vice Chief kneels before him, hooking his finger under the sharp chin, and forcing his head up.

"There now, Petros," whispers the Deputy Director, so quietly Paula can barely hear him; a knowing, almost soft smile crosses his face, and the nun feels herself tremble. "There is a beast in every man, and when you take something that belongs to him, the beast stirs."

He carefully, almost tenderly, strokes Petros's cheek, a cruel mockery of a lover's touch, and the Knight shivers, a pained whimper issuing from his throat as he shuts his eyes tight.

At that moment, Paula knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that given half a chance, she could very easily kill Deputy Director d'Annunzio. Some souls - like a gangrenous limb or a leg shattered beyond repair - deserve to be sliced off.

The Vice Chief's hands slide into Petros's thick thatch of blue hair and grip it tightly, threatening to pull it from the roots.

"Look at me," hisses d'Annunzio. He leans in close and glares as Petros tries and fails to focus his hazy, shell-shocked gaze. "You will be loyal to me, Inquisitor. You will do as I order _when I order it._ Or you will suffer beyond anything you have ever known." He thrusts his nose into Petros's face. "You may have the Minister's favor," he says _very_ quietly, "but let me assure you, Sister Paula does not. You ought to be more careful in choosing which weak, pathetic wretches to protect..."

Petros swallows, his eyes unfocused, his gaze vacant. He wears an utterly alien expression: a poor, dumb, powerful yearning to be shut of the crushing strictures, ills, cruelties, and inevitable failures of the greater Creation. It is the silent voicing of a vain wish to escape. To slip free of the entangling chain of reality and the straitjacket of physical laws...

Fear of punishment produces only so much effort as to alleviate the threat. Material interest engenders only enough energy to achieve the reward. But the Deputy Director has knowingly attacked something far more precious. Pietro Orsini does not suffer things in halves: he feels his attachments deeply, and does not cope well with loss. He has always striven to protect the ones he loves.

The Inquisition takes their strongest children and turns them into little better than bare-knuckle fighters, pitting them against each other. Some are disfigured, or even killed, and those who survive are hardened fighters down to the bootstraps, and designated as Knights.

That is why she knows the Deputy Director targeted Petros… because he is virtuous and compassionate and fair-minded, honorable entirely to a fault. And if he is able to muster the courage to stand against the fire and not break under the scorching heat of it, he will amass an inner strength no one can touch, and beneath the pain that lingers, he will have the cold comfort of knowing that he is strongest one of them all.

The most powerful Knight in the Vatican...

* * *

When sleep proves nonforthcoming one early spring night, Paula throws on her uniform and steals away from the dormitories.

She trudges along the narrow thoroughfare running perpendicular to southern colonnade of the Piazza San Pietro, drifting along the pavement at a sedate pace, her mind focused on the sound of her footsteps echoing along the desolate street. Rome is, in this part at least, asleep. Distant engines occasionally roar, the noise carrying for miles, sounding so much closer in the stillness, reverberating around the silhouettes of bell towers and stadia.

Paula opens her eyes wide and cants her head until her neck twinges, gazing skyward. Above her, the Vampire's Moon makes silver clouds glow crimson. Even with her head tiled far back she can glimpse, right at the edge of her vision, the dome and Maderno façade of San Pietro rearing high above the city, brushing the underbelly of the heavens. Changing the tilt of her head, the structures rise higher until the red sliver of rock is caught in the orbit of the enormous Basilica.

There is a tender irony there, she supposes: she swings among the scattered stars at the end of the thin thread of faith alone.

A pleading little constellation peaks over the scalloped line of the treetops, the motes of blue and white burning with the brilliant sapphire pallor of electric light. Paula recognizes Orion outlined by four bright stars at the corners of an imaginary trapezoid. Within the space defined by these four points, seeming to draw them together into a pattern, is a row of three stars tilted at an angle –– Orion's belt. Arcing downward from the belt is another group of fainter stars –– his sword.

So focused on the constellation, Paula nearly walks face-first into the wall of the Santa Monica degli Agostiniani, a convent church adjacent to the Piazza del Sant'Uffizio, just south of San Pietro, on the border of the Papal Enclave. She recognizes the chapel by its pink-tinted plaster and the two doric pilasters supporting a triangular pediment, the frieze emblazoned with the inscription _Cappella Santa Monica._

Paula pauses by the entrance as, somewhere along the alley, a stone clatters, the sound sharp in the brittle night silence. Raising her head to make a final check that she has arrived at the sanctuary unobserved, she thinks she catches a glimpse of movement across the street, near the Fontana di Porta Cavalleggeri. Something flickers. A Swiss Guard lighting a cigarette? she wonders. Or perhaps Sister Judith on her rounds. No longer a novice, she observes no formal curfew, but neither does she have any desire to entertain company –– she wants to be alone.

Finding nothing amiss, Paula steps inside the chapel.

The sanctuary is a small rectangular apse with a shallow gabled vault. The still, silent air smells of incense and candles along with the damp must of dusty prayer books, furniture polish and drooping flowers. The back wall is occupied by a mosaic dedicated to Saint Rita of Cascia. The crucified Christ in the sanctuary is accompanied by Our Lady and Saint John the Evangelist. The cross hangs over an elliptical sunburst, a dull, feverfew yellow in the gloom.

The weight of quiet feels profound in the humble chapel, empty save for several rows of pews and a stone altar upon which a candle flame burns neatly, bright despite the blackening wick and pooling wax.

Paula foregoes the hard wooden benches and elects instead to kneel at the altar rails; behind her, the light of the Vampire's Moon seeps through the windows, spraying the room with red-limned green, blue, violet. The sound of her pulse in her ears bowls against the ceiling and sifts down with the speckled hues of the stained glass running along the walls of the nave.

The place is silent, worshippers and church workers long removed; Compline ended hours ago, and dawn is still a long way distant. The shadows cast by candlelight make shapes which the nun's eyes cannot help but perceive as lurching, threatening figures, rendered in the chiaroscuro. An ingot of quicksilver from a streetlight in Saint Peter's Square falls through the moted air onto the altar. The air hums with the stillness of a swallowed breath, caught between the stone and stained glass, absorbing the smells of human sweat, mulled wine and communion wafers, white and brown sticks of incense, thurible smoke…

Aside from the small, spitting flame, however, there is no sign of movement anywhere.

Paula faces the altar for a moment. She closes her eyes and folds her fingers...

"Oh God," she begins, offering up a quiet prayer to the saint for whom the chancel has been consecrated, "who in Thine infinite tenderness hast vouchsafed to regard the prayer of Thy servant, Blessed Rita, and dost grant to her supplication that which is impossible to human foresight, skill and efforts, in reward of her compassionate love and firm reliance on Thy promise, have pity on my adversity and succor me in my calamities..."

Suddenly, she hears the rustle of fabric. It doesn't sound like the rough wool vestments of a priest, or even the plate-mail patter of a knight, but before she can remember the words to articulate it, a man's voice slips out of the darkness like a darting silver minnow:

"That the unbeliever may know Thou art the recompense of the humble, the defense of the helpless, and the strength of those who trust in Thee, through Jesus Christ, Our Lord."

"Amen," murmurs Paula, crossing herself. With modest bearing, eyes lowered, she stands. The smell of torches and incense and candles sits heavy in her throat. A draught from the now-open doorway makes the flames dance and the air thicken with the smell of hot wax. Her eyes grow accustomed to the candlelight until she can make out the solitary figure lingering in the entrance to the sanctuary. She makes her manner brisk. "Good evening, Excellency."

Her visitor stands tall and silent, his face relaxed, his demeanor calm, and with a deep breath, Paula cautiously draws closer, the air unaccountably strained with tension at her approach.

"Forgive me for not announcing myself," says the newly-minted Director d'Annunzio. "I must reluctantly admit that I have been somewhat preoccupied with the necessity of maintaining a certain composure."

She is mildly perplexed by the odd answer, but has enough presence of mind to keep from saying so. "I beg Your Excellency's pardon if I have disturbed you. If you would excuse me..."

He lifts a hand in a gesture of airy dismissal. "No, no, Sister Paula, you're the very person with whom I wanted to speak," he says, the words sitting rather strangely.

"The hour is late, Excellency."

"Rest is not, alas, a hallmark of my habit of mind." He turns away from the stained glass window and waits for her to cross the rest of the chapel to join him near the door. His voice is calm and unhurried, but the characteristic drawl is gone. "Nor of yours, it would seem."

She looks up –– for he is half a head taller than her –– into his flat green eyes, and though his expression is merely contemplative, and his manner civil, she registers the gooseflesh erupting on the back of her neck, the blood beginning to drum in her ears like distant thunder; it makes her uneasy, being on the receiving end of an easy amicability in which she knows the Director is well-versed, but has _never_ directed at his knights, and especially not at her. Paula tries to divine whether some secret agenda lays behind his mien of mild interest.

But he is the Director of the Inquisition: he is nothing without his secrets.

"Is there something you needed of me, Chief?"

Once more, with that clear familiarity, the footsteps, the pause, and, at last, the approach.

"Needed?"

"You mentioned wanting to speak with me. Direct me as you wish."

He chuckles softly to himself, wearing an oddly ambiguous expression, as if he is insulted, amused, and annoyed all at once. In a voice tight with smirking self satisfaction but paradoxically devoid of mirth, says, "Your complaisance does you credit, Sister Paula. Tell me," he goes on, with that same insidious little half-smile, disarming in its mockery, "what do you know of Saint Rita?"

"She..." Paula tries to reestablish her equanimity, but her composure in light of Director d'Annunzio's arrival is unaccountably difficult to reassemble. The air around them seems to thrum with some tacit challenge, and accordingly, Paula's heart tattoos a swift, leaden cadence on her ribcage, its rhythm resonating all through her. "She is called the Saint of the Impossible. After bearing witness to the death of her husband and two sons, she entered the convent. In contemplation before an image of the Resurgent Christ, a piece broke free from the statue and pierced her forehead."

"The wound never healed. She carried the stigmata with her until her dying day... and even long after, according to records kept by the Magdalene Monastery in Cascia." The silky, warm voice fogs in her mind like human breath blinding a mirror. He leans forward until their noses are nearly touching. Close. Too close. He reaches out a finger and touches her forehead. "Right here, Paula..."

She knows what has drawn his attention: a thin, white scar, rough against the skin just above her right eye. A leftover from an old skirmish. She doesn't even remember how she got it.

"One can cut the body, and it will heal," his easy smile suddenly sits at variance with his alert gaze, "but do it over and over again in the same spot, and one tends to scar..."

Instead of returning the hand to his side, he strokes the edge of her hairline with his fingers, traces a course over her temple and around her ear, before bringing it to rest on the underside of her jaw.

Color creeps across Paula's cheekbones and the bridge of her nose, a burnished ruddiness, as though she is running a high fever.

He traces a forefinger along her bloodless lower lip. "You seem distressed, my dear. I can't for the life of me imagine why... I make it my business to know the whereabouts of my knights at all times."

The silence stretches out, long and dreadful.

He retreats for only a moment before he starts pulling off his gloves, one finger at a time.

He is standing between her and the door by then, looking down into her face. She can see a vein pulsing at his right temple as he sets his jaw for a moment.

"You're a proper inquisitor now, girl. You're one of my knights. All that you are, body and soul... belongs to me." Though a measure of rational serenity returns to his voice, his nostrils flare when she tries to turn the door handle. He slams a hand against it to keep her from going anywhere, towering over her. Yet another smile plays across his face, this particular specimen insane and ripe. "You're mine."

No doubt he can see the faint startled reflex in her eyes, the momentary flash of flight. But she holds firm, tilting her chin up with just a trace of defiance. She mutters with a kind of numb contempt: "I must ask you to let me out, Excellency."

She tries to draw away from him, but he is surprisingly fast for such an indolent, aristocratic-looking creature. His hands catch her chin. The strength in his long, pale fingers is palpable, but he isn't hurting her. Shaming her, frightening her, tormenting her. But there is no brute force in his touch.

In a way, it is almost worse, she thinks. Cruelty, brutality, pain can be dealt with, shut out, endured. They are straightforward, mundane things… things she can fight, can conquer. But the velvet caress, the banked glance, the knowledge that it is all an elaborate game and she is nothing more than a convenient pawn, a toy to be moved back and forth on the chessboard, makes the situation unbearable. Being able to trap her for a mere few minutes brings at least limited relief from an inability to exercise control over his other knights in however slight a degree. Frustration of his sort must after all, largely if not entirely, resolve itself into an exercise of power...

His touch appends an artery to a circulatory system Paula thought long ossified; she is too slow to douse the bright glitter of panic overlying the dull mask of fear on her face. She fights the urge to grip her tunic tightly, gasping, her chest depressing as though the air is refusing to flow into her lungs. She hates how wide her eyes have gone. She hates how hard her heart is beating, so fast that she can see the pounding through the fabric of her habit.

She hates how, as it did half a decade ago, her fear blinds her to her body's ability to move.

_Nothing has changed._

The professed object of her callousness, her insensitive and cruel disregard for others, is to preserve her own sanity and shield herself from the torments of her mind and memories both –– a rampart against the grief and the shame. But she understands, in an instant, that hiding away from the pain is no more adapted to prevent against further hurts than midnight darkness is to produce noonday light.

A single touch is all it takes to reduce the ramparts to rubble.

Since entering the sanctuary, he has kept his focus locked on her face. But Paula watches as the direction of his gaze slides south. His perusal is slow and comprehensive, sliding over her breasts and continuing past the curve of her hips and down her stockinged legs beyond the hem of her habit. Though he reveals nothing in his stony expression, there is something in the gleam of his poisonous green eyes that ignites a fear and a despair and an anger –– an affronted, indigant, humiliated _fury_ –– that holds her breath rigid in her chest, kept at bay by the fierce drumming of her heart.

She cannot help it. A stifled murmur of misery and outrage escapes her before she can stop it, and he suddenly stills. His fingers still cup her chin, but they are no longer stroking her. He simply stares at her, and for once there is no mockery, no wickedness, in his eyes. He stares at her as if seeing for the first time; she supposes it is his conscience making a belated appearance.

And then the moment passes, so swiftly it might have never existed.

She freezes as the fingers of his free hand stray to the collar of her habit. He gives it a tug, baring the white column of her throat.

Saliva gathers in her mouth, but Paula can't quite muster the nerve to spit in his face.

"Let you out? I haven't dismissed you yet," he states, the words oddly, dangerously calm. His hand begins to draw fingertip circles over her collarbone.

Nausea grips its claws into her stomach. She hears the ocean in her head –– a roar building in her ears and breaking against the backs of her eyes. A warm, wet breath billows thickly at the plane of her jaw, the scent of wine filling her head.

Lips ghost against her ear, and then everything goes faint, blurred, white at its edges... as if seen through falling snow.

When she speaks, her voice has gone very, _very_ quiet: "This... this is... you can't, s-sir..."

A low, labored murmur: "You dare chide me..." his touch, light at first, grows painful as he sinks his teeth into whatever piece of her he has been nibbling on. "You impertinent little bitch."

She squirms against the door. The teeth turn to a tongue, lathing over the shell of her ear and causing her to bite down, hard, on the inside of her mouth to stifle a cry. She tastes blood as two hands –– the door of the chapel abandoned –– slide down her sides and land on her waist, just above the skirt of her habit.

It is impossible to fail to see how his soul has decayed... how removed from humanity, how stretched thin from time away from a pulse. Her body is a riot of shivers beneath her accoutrements at the touch of this disgusting creature... this pale, cold memory of a living person...

It is a marvel –– a miracle, even –– that without a heart he yet breathes.

"That brainless, twaddling idiot can't help you now."

She fixates, then, on his sinister, damnably smug amusement, honing the whole of her focus on those few scant details, the Director's malicious satisfaction allowing the nun to banish her humiliation, the overwhelming fatigue losing its edge...

In an instant, Paula's elbow flies up and clips him under the chin. He stumbles back with a muffled curse of pain, pressing both hands to his face. She twists the handle of the door so hard the lock pops out.

She ducks underneath his arm and rushes past.

She grabs the doorframe as she runs through it, using it to brake and turn her momentum. She sprints across the street, through the guards' gate of the Papal Enclave, and down the corridors of the Holy Office like a thing possessed, taking the stairs to the dormitories three at a time, more a controlled fall than a descent. She races along the passageways of the Palazzo del Sant'Uffizio, seeking out the dirty walls and slapping on thick layers of crimson emulsion, trailing the vampire's moonlight in her wake...

The door of her cell swings solidly shut behind her. She locks herself inside, the space hardly larger than a closet, dimly lit by a candle in a wire cage. Light from the street and the nearby Piazza San Pietro filters through the cracks of the shutters, and it makes her eyeballs ache. Her skin crawls with the recollection of the evening's abuses and her stomach strains to empty itself of whatever meager contents she choked down the day before. Heaving, she throws herself across the room and is violently, painfully sick into the wastebasket.

Her innards continue to convulse, even once emptied. She breathes deeply and tries to calm herself, to put her shattered thoughts back in order. The effort leaves her feeling light-headed and hollow in both mind and stomach. She remains on her knees for what feels like mere minutes, but what the rising sun outside her cell confirms is closer to hours. The memories, like the larvae of a parasitic wasp, burrow deep into the soft gray matter of her brain. They coil in her guts as she wedges herself between the bed and the nightstand, squeezing her eyes shut until bright sparks burst from behind her ruched lids, exhausted from fear but utterly unable to sleep.

It seems as though, for a moment, the world stoppers its breath before heaving a giant sigh, as if to wash the sin away. Exhausted by humanity –– by the bellows of war and bullets, by hateful cries and grieving tears. By all the pain...

Human suffering and cruelty know no bounds. She has tried, so very hard, to view the enigmas of life from a detached perspective, poised on a cliff overlooking the sea, trying to shield herself from the inherent tragedy of existence.

But like the sea, when the tide draws back, the cruelty only crashes harder, a surging line of arched backs and brackish tears.

She hears a wretched, whimpering sound, dim and distant, and realizes, abruptly, that is is coming from her... a sudden sob wracks her body, protruding ribs heaving in hyperventilation.

_"Deus," _she prays, shutting her eyes tight, _"in adjutorium meum intende; Domine, ad adjuvandum me festina..."_

Her lips are salty with tears. She entreats Him for consolation and comfort, a presence to calm her racing heart, but the air stays still, and her blood runs cold.

_"Ego vero egenus et pauper sum; D-d-deus,"_ she begs, _"adjuva me."_

The introductory prayer of the Roman Breviary was always so comforting before, always so warm, but now she finds the words freezing her veins to a brittle, mineral consistency. The anger, the shame, isn't gone, and she registers the emotions, the hatred and the fear, snag deep within her and sit heavy like poison in her blood –– an imponderable mass that causes her heart to hurt and then, unavoidably, to shrivel.

_"Adjutor meus et liberator meus es tu; Domine, ne moreris."_

She feels her exterior harden, a carapace of frozen glass, and with it, all sympathy, all caring fades. It is not the calm, easy release once promised her by the recitation of the gentle, familiar Psalm, but it balances her all the same, cooling her emotions to ice instead of numb nonexistence. Her teeth clench tightly as the last remnants of mercury-sleek, molten fury move through her –– a cleansing, a purge as earnest and unaffected as her earlier vomiting into the wastebasket –– and in an instant, it is gone, leaving her cowering and staring listlessly at the wall, in submission to the auspices of a God who seems, in that moment, unaccountably silent, indescribably cold, and impossibly far away...


	3. Estate

_Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law._ \- Romans 5:8

* * *

Rome is not a small city.

After the Dark Ages, the remnants of humanity retreated under the Holy See's banner, the Vatican opening its borders to house the millions of refugees. The city, in successive centuries, reticulated outward from a concentrated _comune _to a sprawling, labyrinthine municipal fabric.

While the peripheries of the Papal Enclave are dominated by the ruins of the Colosseum and the Forum, the economic life of the Eternal City is concentrated on the eastern shore of the Tiber, in side streets filled with markets, shops, and long, open-windowed warehouses like modern _Horrea Galbae. _Every inch of space is used. As the road narrows beyond the Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano, tenements and businesses simply soar from ground level while open-air agoras crowd the pavements, the streets festooned with vegetables, spices, grocery produce in boxes or hanging from shop lintels, meats dangling from doorways, the roads occasionally turning abruptly into flights of steps careering upwards into bluish mists of urban pollution or plunging down into storehouses retrofitted from the ancient metro lines.

The Inquisition prides itself on having a presence in most parts of the city, and the market district is no exception.

Because of the Inquisition's history, Roman residents near the San Giovanni Addolorata hospital have long believed the sanatorium was built in a low income neighborhood for the benefit of the Church's scientists –– to give them easy access to potential research subjects. The doctor on call is almost always an Inquisitorial officer or high-ranking carabiniere. Once a week, even Sister Simone is obliged to put in a few hours at one of the Addolorata's free clinics.

But it is Sister Simone, more than any other, who works diligently to demonstrate that the hospital is predominantly for the benefit of Rome's poor. Simone knows the nuance of every diagnosis spoken and every gesture made is the heaviest of all the burdens she carries; as a Knight, she is unyielding, every tremble of every muscle forecasting a great crusade against all nonbelievers. As a doctor, she is persevering, with devotion to the abandoned... deaf to praise, steadfast against envy, and inclined only to heal.

For both, she ministers with God in her heart and faith in her soul, cognizant in both pursuits of having assumed responsibility for a sacred mission.

A woman trained both to kill and to cure. Of all the inquisitors, Simone is, perhaps, the most profoundly paradoxical.

Paula sits in a curtained cubical examining the ward through a crack in the partition. The light barely illuminates the pallid faces of the patients, the wimpled nurses moving swiftly from bedside to bedside. Simone, for her part, never smiles. Never laughs. Each movement is unhurried, choreographed and deliberate. Her face is almost prodigiously stoic, her emotions as fiercely guarded as her supplies of medicine.

In spite of her taciturnity, however, her Hippocratic Oath is unassailable, and she cares fiercely for her patients. Manifestly, Paula supposes Simone does this out of some vague impulse towards kindness, or a sort of effort at improving relations between the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Roman populace, though in truth Paula suspects the older Inquisitor finds something fortifying in the chance to touch bodies with wounds she herself has not inflicted.

As Simone approaches Paula, the latter notes that the former has traded her armor and clerical garb for a plain white laboratory coat. Paula only ever sees Simone out of uniform during the annual physicals –– her hair is straw-blond, stricken with silver and knotted at the back of her head. Behind the gunmetal spectacles her eyes are the same color as the isopropyl alcohol in their dark glass bottles, and as she peers, incurious, at Paula, the lack of lines around her mouth –– though, Paula notes neutrally, she still wears dark lipstick –– gives testimony to the fact that Simone has never lost herself in humor, ill or otherwise.

_Il Dottore _pulls up Paula's eyelids, waves a pencil torch from right to left until the light makes the back of her head ache. Paula stares at the wall over Simone's shoulder. She does not like to be touched, but somehow this brief contact with the older woman feels reassuring. Like death, Simone's presence is cold and often callous, but it is real –– brutally honest, inescapably dependable.

Simone's amber eyes reflect the light like a cat's. "Remove your habit, please."

Paula obeys without question, thumbing the multitude of snaps and fasteners running from her throat to the waist of her skirt. She peels the uniform off her arms, rolls it over her head, lets it drop into a black and crimson puddle on the floor. She steels glances at her voyeur from under the fringe of her hair, but Simone's gaze seems incapable of little more than half-lidded indifference.

A fine trembling starts in Paula's neck and suffuses down her spine, so chilled she feels sick. The air is very cold. The bell of the stethoscope on her chest is colder.

"Deep inhale," orders Simone, holding the bulb just left of the center of her breasts. "And exhale."

Paula's breath stutters in her lungs before she releases it, feeling a certain tension drain from her body.

She sits very still as Simone moves her stethoscope south, close to where her fourth and sixth ribs meet. Simone stares into space, her entire concentration turned towards the sound of Paula's heart valves snapping shut after the blood flows across them.

The nun tries to imagine what _il Dottore _must be hearing, drawing from her anatomy lessons at the university: blood as it moves across the cardiac structures in a smooth laminar stream, a quiet, unbroken surge. Or perhaps a valve rough with calcium, the aperture leaky or fused shut, a hole in a septum, blood flowing turbulently across the abnormality.

Paula surprises herself by recognizing a sort of suicidal curiosity at the possibility of the latter...

"When was your last menstrual cycle?" asks Simone, adjusting her earpieces.

"A fortnight and three days ago."

"Any complications?"

"No."

Simone merely nods. She does not say much, but watches and listens with a good deal of interest.

"Are you sexually active?"

Paula blinks.

_Jesteś okropną zdzirą, bezwartościowa w Boskich oczach..._

"No." Save for the slow undulations of her tongue against her teeth, Paula's expression is carefully blank. "I swore an oath––"

"I am your physician, not your father confessor." Simone favors Paula with a look which would have been disdain on any other person, but otherwise, so far as she can judge, the Inquisition's doctor is not exceptionally angry. Disappointed, perhaps. "I had hoped for more promising results," she says. "I suspect the leaflets of your mitral valve are bulging slightly into your left atrium, causing a small heart murmur. Thought it is not life threatening, it does not appear as though your body will be ideal for artificial modifications. We can't risk triggering irreversible cardiovascular complications."

"Would this disqualify me from knighthood?"

"No." Simone removes the buds from her ears and loops the stethoscope around her neck. "Your physical health is otherwise excellent and your intelligence quotient is beyond our ability to test. You are still a valuable asset, Sister Paula. The murmur will, however, foreclose the possibility of clinical trials with the more taxing synthetic chemical compounds, particularly those intended to increase heart rate and raise blood pressure. "

Sister Simone's experiments, sanctioned personally by Director d'Annunzio, are no secret: for several years, _il Dottore _has been researching and developing hormonal and surgical augmentations aimed at increasing muscle hypertrophy responses in the Inquisitors, the primary objective being contesting the superhuman physiologies of the Church's vampiric enemies. Paula has herself tested xanthine compounds aimed at increasing attention and suppressing appetite, though, now that Simone raises the issue, Paula realizes she has never received a dose of any of the sympathomimetics in development––

"What are these?"

Simone's eyes narrow as she pushes her spectacles up her nose. The younger nun's gaze falters in bemusement, shooting briefly towards Simone, and then down.

Paula nearly chokes.

There are, to her horror, an equidistant line of bruises around the base of her neck and on the tops of her shoulders, like a string of black pearls.

A flash of panic runs through the girl, her body tensing. "Combat injury," she mutters, suddenly feeling embarrassed and ashamed. She fights the urge to bundle her habit to her chest.

Simone peers at the bruises, methodical and bereft of all judgement save that of the purely medical variety, noting size and breadth and color. Her touch, once calming, becomes abrasive, like burrs dragging on Paula's skin, and the nun tries to shrug out from under Simone's inspection. Simone merely catches her shoulder, keeping Paula firmly rooted in place. Her grip isn't cruel or cutting, but it is outstandingly strong.

"These are finger marks."

A weightlessness enters into Paula's blood, her murmuring heart taking on the withered emptiness of a weakly inflated balloon. "Yes," she agrees, carefully, attempting to affect her usual chilly insouciance, but it is hard with Simone's fingertips brushing her throat, the lanolin-oil smell of Inquisition vestments in her nose. "From a recent fight."

"Do not lie to me, girl."

"It doesn't matter, Sister Simone. You said so yourself... you are not my father confessor." The words come out fierce and fast and hard. It is easy to hear that they are not lies. At least, not entirely. "If the check-up is complete––"

"It is over when I say it's over, Sister Paula."

Another pause; Simone's grip doesn't loosen. The glacial scrutiny of the Inquisition's physician makes Paula's jaw lock.

"Sister Simone," she says, aware of a minute tremble at the very tips of her fingers, something that might have otherwise been blamed on the antiseptic chill of the examination room. "It is not your concern."

"... If it is a medical matter, one which may well jeopardize or otherwise inhibit your performance, then you'll find it _is_ my concern." The rebuke leaves no room for argument. "I would like to take this opportunity to reiterate that anything you disclose in this space falls under the auspices of strict doctor-patient confidentiality, Sister Paula..."

Paula's chest tightens.

"I make a point to familiarize myself with the Knights with whom I serve. I know well when something is amiss."

"... A misunderstanding," she mumbles in a muted show of temper.

Simone shakes her head. "Once is a misunderstanding. But..." Paula can see the other nun counting the bruises on her collarbone and throat: "Two sets of five? That's a pattern."

"I..." Paula trails off when the older woman raises a hand, her eyes narrowed, her handsome face hard.

"Spare me."

Paula swallows hard and tries to stiffen her knees, which are dangerously close to knocking together where they hang over the edge of the examination table. Cold dread weights her stomach. "You are a Knight. I... I can't..."

"I am a doctor," counters Simone frigidly, "and when a patient is brought to me wounded, I do not know his race or allegiance. I will treat the sick, Sister Paula. To that end, I am going to ask you a series of questions, and you are going to answer them. You are under no obligation to elaborate if you do not wish to do so. A simple yes or no will suffice. Understood?"

Paula heaves a put-upon breath and mutters: "Yes."

Simone gives her a long, intent stare, Paula's shoulder still clasped in her hand. For a moment, something strange crosses the older woman's expression... an undefinable emotion wrought of something almost gentle.

It is gone as soon as it appeared, too quick for the world to remember it.

"Were these injuries inflicted during a sparring session or training exercise?"

"... No."

Simone inclines her head in grave acknowledgement. "Very well... were these injuries inflicted during routine flagellation or other ceremonial form of penance?"

"No."

"No... regardless of the circumstances, did you consent to their administration?"

"No."

"Two final questions, Sister Paula..." Simone's eyes, magnified by the thick lenses of her spectacles, laser into her own, and for a moment, Paula feels herself pinned, like an insect under a microscope. "Did someone in the Church do this to you?"

"... Yes."

Simone's wax-work face remains prodigiously impassive. Blank... save for her eyes, which narrow with a hatred and a wrath and a disappointment so potent they sear the air in Paula's throat.

"Do you wish to report this?" asks Simone quietly, with devastating calm.

"... No."

"Are you quite sure?"

"You said only two more questions."

"So I did. Forgive me." She hears Simone take a breath, and not let it out again. Paula's blood slugs thickly in her ears as the Doctor pulls back, something in her posture going distant and withdrawn. "In that case, I am afraid there is little else I can do for you, child. You may go."

Paula opens her mouth to speak. Her first impulse is to murmur some blithe, biting remark able to dull the edge of Simone's blistering half statement, half question. No great enlightenment dawns, however, and her dry, parched throat issues no sound of its own.

Quietly, quickly, Paula gathers her belongings and refastens the stays and clasps of her habit, shifting her crimson wimple until only a few errant strands of silver are peaking out from under her veil. Simone does not say a word, turning instead to her notes and transcribing, in immaculate cursive script, the results of Paula's physical examination into her records.

The door to the examination room gives a series of loud clicks and swings inward. Paula practically hurls herself through the open doorway and into the Addolorata's corridors.

Behind her, she hears a bottle of disinfectant explode against the wall, thrown with such force Paula nearly leaps out of her skin.

But she does not turn back... she hurries back to the Papal Enclave, leaving Simone to pick through the hundreds of tiny, glistening glass shards...

* * *

Paula wakes up to what she thinks is a backfiring car engine.

She rolls onto her back, heavy-limbed yet restless, memories of the latest nightmare striking her unheralded and venal, sending her thoughts plunging into a toxic black fog.

The noise comes again. Nearby. It is sudden, loud, and carries alarmingly well, echoing along the stone corridors of the dormitories.

Something knocks against her door.

Paula stops breathing. She goes still, staring at her cell door. She hears a soft patting after a moment. Tentative. Exploratory, like a palm placed flat on the wood.

She fetches against the wall at her back and watches a shadow shift under the door; the candlelight from the bracket in the hall extinguishes itself suddenly as the shadow moves. She hears, again, the loud blast of sound.

Paula throws off the covers. A push blade gleams in her hand, slipped from its hiding place up the sleeve of her nightshirt.

She opens the door to step into the corridor...

And very nearly trips over the slumbering form of Brother Petros.

She finds him slumped beside her door like a sack of laundry, head lowered to his shoulder, drooling, making gentle snuffling noises as he exhales...

When he inhales, he snores loud enough to wake the dead.

One of her knives describes a perfect arc above her head before she levels the edge at his throat. He awakens almost instantly and, wise to the danger, goes very still; she can see the startled wariness in the tension of his silhouette.

"Paula."

"Petros. I trust you're aware this is the nuns' wing of the dormitories?"

He swallows, causing a thin, near-invisible thread of blood to bead beneath her blade. "The thought had crossed my mind, yes."

"Then what, pray tell, is your reason for being here? And I do hope, for both our sakes, it's a good one."

"I was..." He takes a swallow of air; he nods twice, as though coming to some manner of resolution. "I was keeping watch."

It is Paula's turn to be bemused. "Keeping watch," she parrots, lowering her knife. She recognizes, then, a certain stubborn, baffling yen for the other man, the type one might feel for a prodigal turning up on one's doorstep after having squandered a fortune far away.

"Yes."

"Keeping watch... while fast asleep."

"I was not fast asleep!"

Paula's expression immediately puckers in a grimace. She latches onto his arm and shakes him as though trying to jar something out of his ears. "For pity's sake, Petros," she hisses, "stop shouting..."

"I'm not shouting!" he shouts. He opens his mouth to –– no doubt –– bellow something further, but then he freezes.

Petros's pale eyes go alarmingly wide.

He gasps, coughing, his stomach spasming violently, the back of his hand flying up to shield his mouth.

When he lowers his arm, there is blood on his lips.

Paula staggers back. "Petros––!"

"It's nothing..." he wheezes, one hand waving away her concern, the other trying to keep the bile in his mouth. "Happens... happens each time..."

"Each time. What are you talking about?"

"A-adjustments."

"Adjustments..." Paula stops abruptly.

Petros's shirt is unbuttoned at his collarbone; his throat is striated with raised scars, and just below his ear... about the size of a coin...

The surgeons have scrunched the skin of Petros's neck like a shirt cuff, embedding a catheter and a thin cannula into the layer of fat. Messy ribs of weld mar the edges, like solidified gastropod trails on the bare metal. Paula can see, through the near-translucent grafts, the delicate bundle of fibre optic wires trailing like raw nerves from the port just under his earlobe...

"It's a flesh wound, nothing more," grumbles Petros. Heat burns up his neck into his cheeks, so he quickly bends over, making a business of ordering one of the creases in his tunic. After he straightens he, at least, has an excuse for the blush, or at least enough of one to pass the notice of anyone besides herself.

Her face, once frozen with confusion, thaws in sudden comprehension. For a moment, the pair of them stand staring at each other.

Paula and all the others receive their steroid doses in needles, the compounds injected intramuscularly in a sterilized laboratory environment.

A full cricothyroidotomy, with a permanent transtracheal socket, is something else entirely.

Paula isn't sure how to respond. Still, a part of her claims a subtle observational power bordering on the clairvoyant where Petros is concerned.

Not that he makes it particularly difficult: he has all the tact and subtlety of a blunderbuss.

She takes his wrist. "If someone catches you here, you'll be excommunicated."

"I... erm..."

"Can you walk?"

He huffs his annoyance. "Brother Petros is no invalid!"

"No, just a bellowing scissorbill who insists on referring to himself in the third person."

"But not an invalid!" he insists stubbornly.

"They're not mutually exclusive."

Scowling fiercely, but nevertheless in no fit state to mount any defense, he allows her to steer him into her cell, the top of his head nearly hitting the lintel on the way in. It doesn't escape her notice that, despite his affectations to the contrary, pain has the whites of his eyes pink and glistening, his skin sweaty, every strand of sea-blue hair practically standing on end.

Petros edges in, shrugging off her offer of assistance. She closes the door and turns towards him. He seems very large in the small room, his broad frame dwarfing their surroundings. She offers up a prayer in thanks for the fact she doesn't have any fragile valuables resting at elbow-height anywhere in the cell.

Despite his sour expression, however, and without being invited, he pulls out the only chair in the room and sits. He dwarves the piece of furniture; he arranges his arms in a position of negligent ease and leans into the brocaded piece of furniture as if he owns it. He seems, Paula thinks, perfectly at home. It occurrs to her that it is a talent of his to comport himself so comfortably in such variegated environments... despite his cloddish bearing, he has the self-assurance of a politician.

She looks away from him, stacking medicinal supplies on her nightstand, before sagging on her cot.

The cell is so small their knees knock together. He holds impossibly still as she reaches up to push back a few damp blue locks that are nearly hanging in his eyes.

"What..." Petros swallows. He goes crimson from his neck to his hairline, his voice worn and cracked. "What are you doing?"

His hair out of the way, she procures bandages, gauze, antibacterial wash, and two tubes of ointment. "What does it look like I'm doing?"

"Simone cauterized the wound."

"But she didn't dress it. She cannot risk the port scabbing over. Besides," Paula reaches for a cotton ball, "I somehow doubt she anticipated your spending the night on the floor. You must have strained it."

"It's not as though I've been indulging in vigorous physical exercise, Paula." He tries to swat her hand away, and winces with the effort.

She sighs, wishing he were not quite so indomitably stubborn. "Your musculature is more pronounced now. The tension is liable to overtax your organs."

Neither one of them draws attention to the enormity of the understatement: Petros towers over everyone else in the Vatican, standing at least six foot five, with shoulders so broad she imagines he has to turn sidewise to go through most doorways. Paula knows the change is Simone's doing –– the increase in surface area allows for a far more efficient dissociation of oxygen in the peripheral skeletal muscle. As well as the outward body modifications, she suspects Sister Simone has also made adjustments to Petros's cardiovascular system, reducing pulmonary vascular resistance and enabling his heart to maintain a high level of function for longer.

The enhancements are placing an unnatural over-extension on Petros's myocardium, vasculature, and metabolism.

He might fuss, accuse her of a disproportionate degree of concern, but Paula knows the socket wound is the least of his problems.

To his credit, aside from a few unintelligible mutterings, he lets her work, managing to keep from flinching, which is no small feat as she strips away the layers of dry blood and discharge from his skin.

The wounds are big, and round, and raw, weathered skin laying in folds like ice scraped from a midwinter windshield. There are great purple welts that will only deepen over the coming weeks. The port will heal in time, but she suspects the entry wounds from the surgical instruments will leave scars.

"Tell me what happened."

"I... I shouldn't. It's not something you ought to––"

"Tell me."

So he does.

He recounts a room crowded with advanced operating equipment... some of it Old World technology. He describes curling pipes ending in facial masks, stands with small displays, wires and electrodes spewing out of them. There are stainless steel centrifuges and PCR machines. There is a huge walk-in refrigerator and several water baths. There is a double door autoclave and two enclosed areas with flow-hoods. There is a walk-in shower for chemical decontamination and shelves upon shelves of canisters filled with fluids of various hues and consistencies.

He tells her how he was escorted into the room with Simone and Garibaldi by his side. The operating theater, he says, was as quiet and cold as a morgue.

As he speaks, Paula stands in stunned silence, transfixed by the mental image of the boy writhing on a blood-gorged bed, screaming and crying and clawing and thrashing. The scene playing out in her mind's eye seems to recede into a vast distance, as though she's managed to disengage herself from Petros's trauma. Forms and images begin to merge, colors swirling into one another: Simone moving steadily around, walking through the other surgeons as if they are liquid things, the horror of the screams becoming muffled and blunt.

Paula imagines them leaving him on the bloodied sheets, in a pool of viscera. Not bothering to close some of his wounds for fear of ruining Simone's handiwork.

She realizes that his account has admitted to a deep, lingering hurt –– a systematically sanctioned cruelty –– without implicating anyone but himself. But it is equally clear that he does not want to linger on the subject.

"Are you in pain?" she asks quietly.

He glares straight ahead with narrowed eyes. "Yes. But it is a passing thing."

Paula knows Petros well enough by now to recognize the difference between sincere confidence and blustering determination.

Still, she is gentle, and she takes her time, being careful not to hurt him. She works until she is satisfied that the lacerations are clean. And then she picks up the antibacterial wash.

Petros sucks in his breath when she brushes a soaked cotton ball against the angry red abrasions. Before she realizes what she's doing, she finds herself blowing a small, cool breath on the wounds as she labors over them.

She and him freeze at the same moment. She can sense him trying to peer at her, his gaze straining, the whites of his eyes glistening like a spooked colt. Her ministrations falter.

As though doused by a great rush of water, a memory comes back to her, unbidden... a recollection of scraped knees and skinny, scabby legs dangling over the edge of the kitchen countertop. A man with kind eyes, his chest rising and falling with the sedative sureness of a lullaby, stretching a plaster over cuts and scratches. A cool breeze on her bloodied knees. _Musisz teraz być dzielna..._

The brief recollections reticulate in vague, mythological configurations. Everything smells, suddenly, clean and warm... like the faint burn of cotton under an iron.

_Tata..._

"Paula?" Petros ventures, uncharacteristically quiet. "Are you all right?"

The sigh is slow in coming, as though her mind needs time to process the odd sense of familiarity. "Whenever I fell and hurt myself, my _Tata_ would blow on the scrapes to dry the blood." She pauses, wondering if some things are learned so young and remembered so deep that they sink like little stones and linger in the murk of her mind. "Force of habit."

She almost misses the slight frown turning his lips. "You've never mentioned your father before."

She gives a start, alarmed by the suddenness of what she supposes might pass for a certain quiet epiphany. It has been difficult, she realizes suddenly, to cope with her parents' death –– for there is no longer any doubt in her mind that d'Annunzio had, indeed, murdered them that midwinter day... butchered them and sunk their bodies to the bed of the Wisła.

But even that had been, if not easy, then at least _distant_. She hadn't actually _seen_ them... hadn't looked into their dead faces and registered the calm, silent forms which life had deserted. She never dared to imagine the horror of their last desperate moments of existence, nor had she re-enacted them in her mind and relived them in her imagination.

In a sense, the lives of her _Tata_ and _Mama_ are remote, reported things... likewise, their deaths are defined more by their subsequent absence than by the events themselves. The details reside in the dark places as a shovelful of ashes already scattered, a faint fallen speck of soot on a blank sheet of paper.

Petros does not speak... merely looks at her with an expression she has seen traces of before but never fully understood until that moment. It is more apology than accusation –– a dark stare of acknowledgement that tells her he has, at some point, intuited something painful in her past and broken in her character, and has long since ceased to judge her for it.

She peers up from the wounds in circumspection. "There is nothing that bears mentioning," she says.

"Oh." He blinks in almost comical puzzlement, silent for a long moment. "I apologize... I wasn't aware you had any family."

The comment is so blatantly idiotic she has to swallow a sound of disparagement. The cold water of memory changes to a scalding, unpleasant heat which grips her in the stomach and pushes against her lungs. "Did you imagine I sprang fully-formed from someone's forehead, Brother Petros?"

"That wasn't what I meant," he grumbles, looking rueful. She knows he can see, clearer now than ever before, the years of hurting in her eyes. Petros understands that Paula, too, feels pain and loss, even if she does not show it in the same ways he does.

He discloses too much. She discloses nothing at all.

Perhaps he imagines that it would be best for her if she could give an expression to her grief and a voice to her pain and in so doing, set them free. It is evident to her that he wishes to share in the emotions she is unwilling –– or perhaps unable –– to risk.

"Then what was it, exactly?" she asks, a demand in all but timber and tone. She trades the soiled swabs for a roll of bandages. "That in circulating one's private affairs one is making a mark in the ledger of one's personal grief? Do you think accepting your pity or subjecting myself to your frankly insulting attempt to cotton to old hurts will begin to make amends?"

Petros winces, and not, she suspects, from the friction of the bandages against his ruined throat. "It can't fill the void, Paula, but it may yet make things even."

She recognizes fear at the risk of her own vulnerability, hatred at the Inquisition and Petros both, but she finds within herself no dignity of emotion, no deep or complex sorrows. "No. It will not. All you have left is a deficit of two."

"Then both are at an equal loss." He takes a deep drag of air. She watches a muscle twitch in his jaw.

"And how does this loss serve to make the memories any less painful?"

"It doesn't... bemoaning one's misfortunes is selfish," he continues. "I've never tried to deny that."

"Then what is the point of any of it?"

"I..." His face falls, his mouth showing hints of a faint, concentrated scowl. He heaves a deep sigh and says... "I thought talking about them might help."

Paula stares blankly at him.

"I did not ask for your help. I do not want it." Her quiet, keen irritation is matched only by the care she takes in pinning his dressings. There are times when her expression gives the lie to the cold, pitiless soldier she so often appears to be; she knows that this is one of those times. "Make sure you change the bandages regularly. The Inquisition can ill-afford to have you bedridden with septicemia."

He lifts his shoulders in a dispirited shrug and looks away. "I doubt I can get sick."

He's probably right. Still...

"You never answered my question."

Petros, caught off-guard by the change in topic, makes ambiguous grunt of confusion in lieu of actual words.

Paula stifles a sigh. "Why were you outside my room in the first place? Unless you sought me out for medical care?"

"No... I told you, I was keeping w––"

"Keeping watch. So you said. I would know why."

Petros opens his mouth to argue, but as he watches Paula gather her supplies, something changes in his face –– a response to the ceaseless disquiet that Paula can't entirely manage to hide. For some reason, his naive, almost childlike sense of concern gently undermines Paula's hostility, softening her until she can't help but observe the subtle interplay with astute interest.

"Has something else happened?" asks Paula, looking over him closely. He appears riled about something, but aside from the clean white bandages around his throat, free of significant physical damage.

But then he leans over, eyeing the edge of her collar. When Petros stretches out a careful, wary hand, Paula lets him, even as she registers a chill settle on the back of her neck. He doesn't seem embarrassed, or even aware of the impropriety of their positions. His long fingers curl into her neckband, the thumb of his other hand passing gently near a regiment of regular, dark purple marks. "You bruise easily," he murmurs, his blue head bent over her shoulder. The older Inquisitor growls, "Your throat... Paula..."

"Combat injury," she says again, even less convincing than the first time.

Petros's eyes narrow, clearly displeased. He hisses from the corner of his mouth: "You are always telling me to be mindful of small details, Sister Paula, and I am. Right now. Being mindful of small details."

Paula is –– uncharacteristically –– flustered by the barrage of overloud declarations, and somewhat taken aback by Petros's –– characteristic –– lack of tact. Her natural irritation surfaces: "Speak plainly then." Straightening imperiously, her hands clasped in her lap, she looks not at her companion but peers blindly at the cobwebs in the corners of the room, trying to think of what to say to get him to leave. "Or, if you're feeling well enough, go back to your own cell. I'm t––"

"Was it him?" The question doesn't fall into the middle of her protest so much as plummet.

"Petros––"

"Was... it... him?" he snarls.

Paula glares at him, trying to gauge his intentions, and finds no malice, no manipulation, just simple concern and a quest for answers to questions that he has, she realizes, long been asking himself.

"How dare you... you have no right..."

_How long..._

_Who else..._

She means to fire the words off with scorn and a sneer, but to her horror, her voice wavers.

"Paula..." he sounds wretched.

Petros makes no accusations, but Paula is sure he has already guessed the truth, or part of it. It is not an altogether difficult conclusion to draw: the Director has cultivated a certain reputation... described, often with a facile contempt, as a philanderer, but one with an instinct for ceaseless vigilance that suggests hungers of a crueler bent are latent in him, like a fire smoldering beneath the ashes...

People know of his appetites. _Important_ people know... Simone's reaction is proof enough of that. And no doubt the Ministry of Doctrine has at some point settled down to solving the insoluble problem in the best way it knows: by ignoring the issue entirely in the hope it will eventually go away... or, at the very least, concentrate its energies on prey whose testimonies would be of laughably little consequence.

D'Este has designs on the Papacy; he will not countenance such a scandal.

Thinking this, Paula takes some small comfort in the fact that Petros is not uncontrollably outraged. There is an occasional glint of fury in his eyes, but no more, and she feels she can deal with that. She belatedly recognizes that Petros could break the Director's neck with little difficulty, and it is likely taking a not insignificant portion of his self-control to keep from giving in to the impulse.

"Paula, did he..."

Reading the question in his haunted gaze, the words he cannot yet bring himself to voice, she mutters scratchily, "No. In any case, it's not something you need concern yourself with..."

He looks genuinely upset. "I am so sorry. I... forgive me. I wasn't trying to be boorish."

As if you have to try, she thinks irritably.

Petros cracks his knuckles as though the motion might ease his tension, but it only serves to make him more unsettled.

"How can you abide it..." There is a deadly note in his voice that makes the back of her neck crawl.

"I beg your pardon?" He is rewarded for his efforts with a glare from Paula that could pulverize rock. He seems not to notice.

"That barbarous," he hisses, his fury not in the least sense implicit, "officious––"

"You'd do well to learn when to keep your tongue in your head. He is still our superior."

"That man's station does not bequeath to him the latitude to... to..." Petros can't bring himself to say the words, his face mottling in an uncommon frustration; Paula somehow suspects asking him to lower his voice would be a waste of oxygen. "The _cruelty_...!"

"In view of God's mercy, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God –– this is your true and proper worship," quotes Paula quietly. "I know my place, Brother Petros. I suggest you mind yours."

"That is not your place!" he cries. He finishes his outburst through clenched teeth, alarming her with his vehemence. He seems to notice the rising edge of hysteria in his voice and lowers it in abject desperation. "It is wrong, and vile, and... and..."

They fall silent, something bloated and ugly hanging in the air, a humid pressure, like the press of a thunderstorm. Petros, who has risen from his chair, sits back down again. He watches Paula sag on her cot, numbed by the jarring anger that radiates from the older Inquisitor like the corona of a newborn star.

Inside, Paula's stomach clenches painfully. She turns and sorts Petros's words, the misshapen circumstances that have orchestrated to make those words as certain to Paula as her own existence. And she tries to reconcile her shame with the uncanny certainty of watching all her many self-deceptions slip away under Petros's singularly unique brand of intuition.

She chances a glance in his direction. "If you're doing this out of pity––"

"No." Petros grimaces, the expression on his face rigid and unhappy, anguished for her sake, and furious. It is all he can do to keep his voice calm –– for her own benefit more than his. Too little too late, Paula fears. "Is that why you've insisted on keeping it a secret? You're afraid of being pitied?"

"That, and... it's a shame I'd rather keep private."

"Not your shame, Paula," he says firmly. The sincerity in his deep voice snatches her breath away. "Never yours. I... I only wish..."

"There is nothing we can do," she murmurs. "We are not long out of Novitiate. We have little power of our own."

The anguish and anger leaves Petros's face, to be replaced by an expression of profound defeat. For a moment, Paula feels a pang of sympathy despite herself. Petros is not particularly idealistic, nor entirely naive... just frustrated and tired and in a situation to which he must adopt a certain posture if he has any intention of keeping a grip on his station.

Her room is so small; their hands touch, their knees knock together. They are both trembling.

To her utmost mortification, Paula feels a single tear slip out from under her eyelid, overwhelmed and aggrieved by her shame, the acute sense of betrayal, as well as her partner's earnestness, his need to make amends, and his aggravation at having been denied that very desire.

She sheds a tear for the fact that _he_ is the one in great pain, his body mangled and mutilated, but in light of her suffering, he doesn't seem to care about himself.

Paula's breath catches when she feels a single calloused fingertip wipe the moisture away, its owner utterly unaware that it fell for not for herself, but for him.

"Damnation," she mutters.

Petros knuckles his eyes and then lets his arm fall back, resting his loose fist across his forehead. He bites his lip, frustrated by his lumbering, thoughtless words, by his inability to mend a hurt he has not caused.

"Is that it, then?" he asks, a little plaintively, slumping in on himself.

"Our silence would probably be the best thing for all concerned," says Paula. "There is nothing to be done."

"There is one thing," he retorts with blazing righteousness. "I will remain here. I am going to sit outside that door, and I am going to keep watch."

"Don't act like any more of a fool than you already are. If you're caught here, they'll have you excommunicated, possibly arrested."

"He will not touch me."

The stony mask of anger does a poor job of concealing her pain. "Petros..."

"Despite what everyone in this blasted order seems to think," he hisses, his words a fierce bur, fixing Paula with a furious blue stare, "I am not an idiot. I'm well aware the Director can't stand me, but he can't cross me and run the risk of Cardinal d'Este losing the financial patronage of my family."

She does well to conceal her surprise. Never before has Petros given any indication of a cognizance of his unique entitlement, and certainly, never before has he sought to stockpile it as ammunition against his superiors. Putting their past lives behind them is necessary to gaining the humility that is proper to servants of the Church, but Paula has been misguided in mistaking Petros's natural arrogance for sheltered ignorance.

His is a mind that is not unlike his body –– ample in size, nigh-on indestructible. When Petros takes a weapon in hand he does not readily waste time with it, and when he takes something in his head it is not soon forgotten or abandoned. He is a powerful man with a powerful mind, even if both are, at times, lumbering in their intention.

He is willful, maddeningly stubborn, quarrelsome and loud, but somehow these things are trifling: there is a passion inside him that burns like a flame in a sconce.

A tragically brilliant simpleton.

"I do not believe you are stupid, Petros."

"More fool you," he grumbles, grimacing, "because, in truth, I really am. Stupid, I mean. Someone so full of self conceit there's no room for good sense. Oafish and slow-minded."

And kind, she thinks, which makes him the biggest idiot in the world.

"This station is purposeful for a man like you... spiritually, of course. It suits you."

"And you?"

"It is... necessary."

"... are you satisfied with it, Paula?"

_Do you want to leave?_ he does not ask.

She tenses inwardly, wishing desperately he were more adept at knowing when to hold his tongue on certain glib comments. She doesn't dare look at him, but she apprehends the immediate stillness of his form so close to hers. "I did not choose to be an inquisitor."

It is not an answer, she knows... but she has little else to surrender in its stead.

A beat. "Did I?"

"Who can say... who among us chooses our demons, Brother?"

The question lingers. The contemplation turns to stillness, and the stillness to a strained silence.

Paula begins to say something, then is taken by a sudden, fierce yawn that makes her eyes sting. Almost immediately, Petros's own mouth opens in a jaw-cracking yawn of his own.

"Go back to sleep, Paula. I'll keep watch."

She knows that sleep is well beyond her. Seconds drag by, mounting to minutes, and still the silence bellies out, broken only by the report of his fingernail against his palm, a nervous tick. The moonlight fills the cell in streams, etching out Petros's rather large shape.

"I..."

Almost imperceptibly, he inclines his head.

"You have my word. The next time he touches you...

"It will be in an appeal for mercy... before you kill him yourself."

* * *

Sweat slicks her skin and her shirt clings to her back as their sparring session wanes into its third hour. Even Petros, normally indefatigable, is breathing heavily, a sheen of perspiration glossing his forehead.

Paula is outstanding on all man-portable weaponry, but she is beyond outstanding at hand-to-hand combat. Due to her size, she prefers close-range physical sparring, her style a combination of ferocious blows, holds and throws, adapted from bayonet tactics, baguazhang, boxing, and collar-and-elbow wrestling, plus expert knowledge of emeici rings and duck blades. She relies on an economy and efficiency of motion, keeping up constant movement to build momentum and minimize energy expenditure. Petros, conversely, is rather ungainly without a longspear, lance, or ranseur in his hand –– he prefers reach weapons, in order to work the space and better command the field of battle. In close quarters, he is too big; he lacks the turnover and agility necessary to counter Paula's quick, coordinated attacks. What she lacks in technique –– which Petros possesses in spades –– she makes up for in speed and cunning.

He throws a fist that would have punched a hole in the fuselage of one of the Inquisition's airships, but his footing and the set of his wide shoulders forecast the strike well ahead of its execution. Paula has ample time to block and send her partner spinning across the grass with a twist of her arm. She feints to her left and Petros goes to counter as she simultaneously swings a low blow into his other side.

If she didn't pull her punch at the last possible moment, she would have broken three of his ribs.

Petros quite loudly curses himself for his slipshod attention. Tired and frustrated, acting almost entirely on impulse, he lunges forward without warning, his attacks become fast and fearsome, and Paula staggers backwards.

If she were any other soldier, the ferocious counteroffensive –– the staggering intensity afforded him by his brute strength –– might have brought the sparring session to a swift conclusion, but Sister Paula knows Brother Petros as well as she knows herself. She forces herself to concentrate: he is no longer so blatant in signaling where his next strike might fall, but the tells are still there, provided one knows where to look.

With the random, vicious slashes of two bladed palms, Paula feigns a strike low, predicts the rise of Petros's elbow, the angling of his arm, and with a swift motion, turns her hands away from him, catching his wrist on the pass and wrenching him to her eye-level; bent at the waist, Petros stumbles. Paula swiftly kicks out at his legs, catching one knee and sending him crashing to the ground.

Labored, heavy breathing accompanies him as he glares at the pristine blue sky, face mottled crimson, hair damp and plastered to his forehead. He flops on his back, eagle-spread on the grass.

Paula is exhausted. Adrenalin kept her going during their long spar, but it wears off almost as soon as Petros hits the ground. She feels feverish, her throat dry, her limbs quaky. She yawns expansively.

"You won," he grumbles, more than a little pouty.

"You're too slow."

She hears the grass rustle as he shrugs. "I will get faster."

Paula takes a good, long look at him. Somehow, he's grown even taller: he is almost the same height as the small pines surrounding the Trajan Baths, his limbs long and well-muscled. His clothes remain the same, though, and are stretched almost comically tight across his shoulders, the cuffs of his sleeves scrunching midway up his arms.

"And you will be even heavier and slower with armor on," she murmurs. "Judith has her work cut out for her."

Petros shakes his head. "I have made... other arrangements on that front. A family heirloom... the Armatura del Signore has remained in my family's possession for generations. _Diciamo,_" he recites in his native language; Petros's Latin is wooden and his Common Tongue, overloud and abrasive, but his Italian, in marked contrast, is pale and subdued, almost soft: _"Signore, aiuterò il Tuo Paese; il mio spirito riveste l armatura del coraggio."_

Petros wears an expression that has become something of a defining fixture for him: grim satisfaction. A certain cross, implacable calm.

He stretches out in the long grass and basks in the healing brunt of the springtime sun, resting just beyond the reach of an ancient thermae. The Parco del Colle Oppio lies peaceful in the thickening light of late afternoon, the gardens immaculately manicured, the fountains bubbling, birds singing, topiary casting elegant shadows. The grass grows in dense tussocks, the occasional white umbrella of cow parsley bursting amongst the green. The air smells of lemon and myrtle and beds of fresh mulch that make the wind blow pleasantly pungent. At the foot of the slope, a blue-glazed pond lays as placid as a pampered cat. Ducks scarcely ripple the surface as they bob and dab in their ceaseless quest for food. The park trail winds in and out of the glossy-leafed rhododendrons and sweetly scented azaleas, and Paula begins to forget her aching feet and overtaxed muscles and to enjoy the scenery in spite of herself, lulled by the drone of the bees and the birdsong from the trees.

She glances over at Petros. He stares up at the sky, watching the clouds. Peculiarly, he shuts his eyes each time the light is blotted out; opens them again when the sun returns scarlet against his eyelids. She thinks it ought to be the other way around...

She finds her eyes wandering to his clean-shaven jaw, the hair long enough for the wind to disturb, his high forehead and straight nose, the sun lending him a soft, lambent glow.

Fiercely alive. Achingly vulnerable.

As though wise to her scrutiny, his eyes shift and finally acknowledge her presence. His features crease disconcertingly, and his face goes slack. The look is not one she recognizes, which upsets her almost more than the ambiguity of the expression itself.

"Is something the matter?" she asks, her voice unintentionally accusing.

"Paula," he says with grave seriousness, solemn but still loud enough to startle a nearby parakeet from its perch. "May I say one thing of you?"

She stares at him, nonplussed. "It's not as though you have to ask perm––"

"You have a very beautiful smile."

The wind through the grass rasps away the sudden silence. She puts a hand to her face, touches it gently to find it furrowed and creased in suspect places. The corners of her mouth have lifted up by the merest fraction, dimpling her cheek and causing the bruises on the bridge of her nose and the fresh cuts on her swelling lip to sting.

She did not realize she _was_ smiling...

It is hardly beautiful. It is hardly a _smile _at all. It's a bloodless scrunch of the mouth, like a puckering at the taste of citrus, or the grimace of a child determined not to weep.

And yet, he grins at her stupidly, overjoyed at even this smallest of concessions... as though the tiny, twisted little smile is as precious to him as Madelon and her delicate blooms of black hellebore...

She registers a surge of emotion beneath her sternum, bringing an ache to her throat. Something nameless yet essential stirs in her chest and she cannot bear the presence of it. It isn't a feeling of great depth. It doesn't bear down her bones or make thinking clearly an effort but it feels vast in some way she can't wholly articulate, stretching beyond an endless sea of secret and nameless sufferings and anguishes and yearnings. She feels like a creature adrift in a sinking boat with only a wooden spoon with which to bail the encroaching ocean. To try and make her refuge dry again. To make it seaworthy again...

"Ah! I think I see them!"

Both inquisitors identify the source of the voice immediately: Paula, almost grateful for the interruption, straightens and brushes the few stray creases from the front of her tunic. Petros, on the other hand, leaps to his feet so violently and so suddenly anyone watching might wonder if someone fired a pistol near his ear.

Fortunately for them both, they are rooted in perfect parade posture by the time the scarlet figure rounding the hill resolves itself into a familiar middle-aged Cardinal.

Alfonso d'Este's perennial galero is slightly crooked from the walk up the southern spur of the Esquiline Hill, but he seems grateful for the shade cast by its wide brim.

Two others accompany Cardinal d'Este, a man and a young woman. A contingent of three Pontifical Guards bring up the rear.

The glittering gray eyes and sumptuous cascade of ringlets identify the woman immediately as the Duchess Sforza... recently elevated to the bishopric, if Paula recalls correctly. The black velvet of her dress renders her complexion as pale as porcelain. Intricate silk braiding trims the modestly high neckline and defines the vertical slash running from from throat to collarbone, affording a subtle glimpse of white skin. In keeping with her station, no other adornment mars the simple lines of the gown. It is an elegant garment, suitable for a lady of quality.

Paula catches Cardinal d'Este peering sidelong at Sforza expectantly, although whether she is paying him even the slightest mind is impossible to tell. Now that she has drawn closer, Paula thinks the Duchess looks rather gray, as though the long walk from San Pietro to the Oppian Hill has exacted a more sizable physical tole than she cares to intimate to either one of her companions.

"Brother Petros and Sister Paula are the best of the Inquisition's knights. Extraordinary talent... don't you think so, Caterina? Are these not the caliber of warriors you're looking for?"

The girl favors Paula and Petros both with a sharp, judgmental gaze that neither Inquisitor particularly cares for. It falls at an odd lagrange point between disdainful and dismissive. "As I have already articulated at great length, my Lord Uncle, while Director d'Annunzio has done a truly admirable job of filling the Inquisition's ranks with the best Christendom has to offer, the fact that, as a fighting force, they remain accountable only to the Ministry of Doctrine makes your knights ill-suited for my purposes."

The furrow between d'Este's eyebrows deepens. He takes a handkerchief from the pocket of his cassock and dabs his brow with it, as though trying to obscure his disapproving expression from his shrewd niece. "I take it you're still intent on assembling this... _extrajudicial_ team of yours, then?"

"You wound me, Eminence. Do I look like some cat-stroking spymaster to you?" D'Este, Paula thinks, is wise not to dignify the question with a response. "My special operations section would merely resolve international situations under the jurisprudence of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The clerics under my command may operate with immunity in any country loyal to the Vatican. The Inquisition, on the other hand, serves predominantly as a domestic security force."

"That's well as may be, my dear, but inquisitors can also be dispatched outside Vatican territory."

"Only on occasion, and only to act as a security detail to ecclesiastical dignitaries of sufficiently high rank."

The Cardinal takes a breath. "Well..."

"To deploy one set of agents beyond the borders of the Holy See is an administrative necessity," says Sforza quietly, her voice still tinged with those humming, thoughtful undertones. She never seems to speak too much or too long, and yet, without obtruding, she becomes the center of the conversation almost effortlessly, so naturally does she belong where the moment finds her. "But to deploy two smacks of purposeful belligerence. You've never struck me as a man spoiling for a fight, Uncle."

"No!" he answers sharply –– more sharply, Paula estimates, than he intended. "No, of course not." He softens his tone. "You're right, of course. The secular states are unstable enough as it is. I expect any day now we shall be receiving word of fresh riots incited by the Kališníci in the Duchy of Bohemia... "

"And it would not do to have the common lords suspect the Vatican of amassing an invasion force each and every time we are called to resolve a petty inter-territorial dust-up."

"No indeed," agrees d'Este thoughtfully. "Your logic is, as always, flawless. It seems that I was a trifle careless in my estimation of how much consideration you have devoted to this matter, Caterina."

The young woman waves the Cardinal's concerns away casually. "Think nothing of it."

Minister d'Este, assuaged by his niece's ready and exacting charm, glances over the Duchess's golden crown, his gaze alighting on the man standing a few feet away, arms crossed, scowling. "You've been uncharacteristically circumspect this afternoon, my boy."

"Ah, don't spoil it for us, Uncle," says Sforza with surprising cheek; she holds her expression for a moment before smiling gamely. "I was quite enjoying the peace and quiet."

"If you think I'm one to credit each and every jot of nonsense you feel the need to share, Caterina, you're sorely mistaken," growls the man. He mutters her name like a curse, something that leaves a bad taste on the tongue.

He is a large, dangerous-looking figure, with narrowed eyes from which bad temper and belligerence lash out. He wears his blond hair pulled back with a gallows-rope tightness that cannot possibly be comfortable. It certainly does nothing to improve his mood.

His is not a kind face, and unlike Lady Sforza's, it is not a delicate face –– although there are, Paula notes, certain similarities in their appearances: juxtaposed against their blond hair, their eyes are an incredibly contrary shade of silver; their jaws are sharply defined, and both hold their mouths in harsh lines that attempt to harden the full curve of their lower lips but can't quite manage it. They both bear such a marked resemblance to the gray-eyed, keen-faced Holy Father that their identities can scarcely be in doubt.

But the instant Paula's gaze crosses that of the tall, silver-eyed man, something skitters across the back of her neck like a rain of white sparks. He stares at her from beneath a brow drawn low in a forbidding expression. Despite the man's severe appearance, however, something about him reaches out to her, touching Paula with an intrinsic sort of recognition.

It is, Paula realizes abruptly, not unlike looking in a mirror...

The nun senses with a certainty beyond rational explanation that his thoughts –– indeed, his very purpose in being at the park –– are intent and focused _exclusively_ on her. She has earned, quite without her knowing why, the man's full and undivided attention.

By comparison, he doesn't exhibit the least interest in Petros.

It does not escape her counterpart's notice; she hears his affronted huff, nostrils flaring like a battle-weary dragon.

She eyes the man cautiously as he bends his head solicitously down to the Cardinal, whispering something into his ear. Much to her consternation, and no small degree of alarm, d'Este beams.

"A splendid idea!"

Sforza, privy to the exchange, looks askance at the other man. "My Lord Brother, while you may derive some perverse pleasure from watching your underlings beat the stuffing out of one another, let me assure the rest of us do not."

Finally, his gaze breaks from Paula, and the man favors Sforza with a glare that grows grimmer, angrier, the longer his eyes linger, radiating across the lawn as perfect, vulgar contempt. "I never took you for a coward, dearest Caterina."

Temper flashes in her eyes, and her perfect poise falters the merest fraction. "I am no coward. More to the point, this nun isn't some straw dummy at which to swing one's sword. It's an affront to decency, not to mention normalcy."

The man raises a sizeable eyebrow. "She is fully capable of defending herself. All exceptional people are, by definition, _exceptions_ to your so-called _normalcy_. If they insist on comporting themselves as ordinary creatures, they can never demonstrate their truly extraordinary talents."

"That is a very well-rehearsed and eloquent excuse for being an absolute brute to this young woman."

"Why aren't you willing to at least see where this might lead?" he dares her, voice loud but lowly-pitched, like rocks in a grinder. "What would that perfidious professor of yours call it...? The scientific method? Think of this as an experiment."

"That would be very empirical of you," says Sforza sniffily, "if there were anything here worth investigating. You are free to parade your toy soldiers howsoever you please without having to subject me to all your interminable posturing."

"And what might you call those aberrations in the Palazzo Spada if not toy soldiers!" Paula catches a hint of a sneer on the man's face. His tone is acidic. "Be honest with yourself, Sister Mine: you are as curious to see how this will play out as I am. You can't deny the truth."

"The _truth_," she says churlishly, "is that I don't trust you, and I don't like secrets, which you're obviously keeping. I imagine the pressure must get to you, all those plans going at once. I fear you might give yourself a coronary, Brother."

"I have a strong heart," he snarls.

"Made entirely of stone. Good at breaking an assassin's blade."

"Now now, Caterina," interjects Cardinal d'Este, evidently well-accustomed to acting as mediator between the two siblings.

He snaps his fingers above his shoulder, and one of the Pontifical Guards jogs over, saluting as he approaches the Minister of Doctrine. D'Este gestures for the guard to surrender his weapon. The Cardinal has to rest one end of the spear in the grass to keep the weight of it from tipping him over.

Paula recognizes the lance at the same moment as Petros, and out of the corner of her eye, she swears she sees his complexion grow two shades paler.

It is the same weapon given to Petros that morning in the Castel Sant'Angelo...

"This might prove educational," d'Este is saying to Sforza, "in the event you elect to employ Sister Simone's services in your own organization."

"I have a medical doctor in my employ already," she assures him tartly. "And in any case, Uncle, the men and women under my command have no need for such... _artificial_ enhancements. Their gifts are God-given."

Petros munches at his lip, scowling fiercely, allowing his indignation to momentarily distract him from darker memories.

Lady Sforza is, at present, doing little to endear herself to either one of the two Inquisitors.

D'Este merely smiles indulgently, while the second man glares at the ground with such concentrated intensity a part of Paula wonders if the grass might catch fire.

"Brother Petros!" calls the Cardinal, crooking his finger in a beckoning motion, like calling a dog to heel.

Paula risks a glance to her right, but Petros is already marching towards his superior, shoulders squared and his eyes lifted to the horizon. Foreboding nips at her heels and chills the sweat on her skin until she has to tense her muscles to keep from shivering. Alfonso d'Este is a cold, self-relishing man, and though he cannot hold a candle to d'Annunzio's cruelty, he is nevertheless a great talent for inflicting humiliation.

This, she suspects, is not going to end well.

Her suspicion crystallizes into a certainty when Cardinal d'Este orders casually:

"Have another go, Brother Petros... and this time, use your booster."

Petros's eyes go so wide she is half surprised she doesn't hear them clang against their orbits. "Eminence?" he splutters.

"Twenty CCs ought to do it." The Cardinal passes Petros the lance, dragging it on the grass; the Inquisitor is forced to either accept it or let it drop. "And I must admit, I'm eager to see Simone's handiwork."

"Forgive me my impudence, Your Grace," he booms, "but Sister Paula has no such enhancements at her disposal."

D'Este's expression is inscrutable. "Your point being? I am not testing Sister Paula, I am testing _you_."

"Sir, I beg your pardon, but the advantage would be so steep––"

"That's rather the point of the booster, Brother Petros."

"Excellency, I beseech you... do not ask this of me..."

Paula peers between the two prelates: she expects no assistance from the grim-faced man, who is the one who suggested the spar in the first place, and Sforza doesn't look rueful or pitying so much as bored.

"Brother Petros," intones Paula, taking a deep breath. "You're insulting me."

"Wh-wha––"

"Follow your orders, Inquisitor."

"Sister Paula is wise... you'd do well not to besmirch your partner's honor," agrees d'Este gravely; he observes the blue-haired Inquisitor's tense face, the way his gaze remains fixed on the lance as though eyeballing a poisonous snake. "Nor your own, Brother Petros."

Petros, still grimacing, snaps the staff back, holding the haft at the one-quarter position, bottom tucked underneath his arm, end rising back behind his head. He breathes in deeply, half crouched, trails of sweat running down the sides of his face, pale eyes glittering. His fingers stray to the port in his neck, a small circle of metal like a silver coin impressed into his throat.

Paula decides then to make up his mind for him.

She draws her moon blades –– a pair of enormous curved knives with two steel crescents apiece, ideally suited for a fighting style that relies on tight bladework and subtle dodges to provide maximum defensive coverage. She holds one of the blades at waist height on her nondominant side, drawing the other back in a one-handed grip, her hand angled forwards with the blade held parallel to her arm.

Paula assumes brace position for a short few seconds.

Then she explodes into motion, slashing for Petros's stomach.

She leaves him little choice: he parries instinctively, before snarling and hacking straight back, directing a series of blows at Paula's knees until she leaps aside in retreat. Petros is using the weapon less like a lance and more like a cudgel... entirely ineffectively.

Elegantly, Paula swings her blades in a figure eight, catching Petros's jabs easily. He tosses the lance from his right hand to his left as though it weighs nothing at all. In the same second, he thrusts the engine towards Paula's sword hand. The curved edge of a moon blade hooks around the shaft of the lance and, metal screeching on metal, swings the weapon away.

"Don't hold back, Petros..." she hisses under her breath. "Don't _pity_ me..."

His hand is already moving to the small kit bag under his robes, his long legs carrying outside the radius of Paula's reach.

He breathes in and exhales as he places a syringe to the port on his neck. He pushes the needle of a pale blue ampoule into his flesh. A little pinch, and the plunger descends.

Veins spiderweb from the injection site, the thin, delicate blood vessels swelling until they resemble the legs of a house centipede.

Paula blinks.

And Petros... vanishes.

The wind whistles past her ear... gooseflesh erupts on the back of her neck...

"Forgive me."

Paula is airborne before she registers the agony of the blow.

And then her body is smashing through a blanket of pine boughs, landing on a litter of rocks with a dull thud.

The fall _hurts_.

She doesn't go far but she lands hard, right ankle first, then her left arm. Paula hears several snaps along the way and feels a corresponding number of excruciating bursts of pain, so white and sudden and blinding that she can't do much more than lie on the rocks and _breathe_. Blood wells in her eyes, gutters into her mouth and down the back of her throat. She can't feel her right leg or her left arm. Looking down, she sees a large bone protruding from the shin of her trousers, another from her wrist. The branches have flayed the skin from her shoulder to her elbow, shredding her rough wool habit and leaving her near naked above the waist; the pooling gore, however, conceals what the conifers conspired to reveal.

She rolls on her back, staring at the boughs of the trees, the sun streaming between their branches: pale light dabbles her face from dozens of golden spots constellated across the barreled arch of the canopies, like out-of-focus stars scattered across the vault of heaven.

Her pain is so great that she can no longer struggle or move at all, except to turn her head briefly in Petros's direction, until his horror-filled eyes find hers.

Somewhere, as if from a great distance, Paula can hear the sounding of the vesper-bell, the call to the service of evening prayer. Her body convulses at the sound, and she vomits blood and bile across her chest. It slithers, thick and foul, down her stomach. A hand twists in her heart.

She hears a single high-pitched scream, like an animal chittering, and she has only enough presence of mind to realize the sound is coming from _her_ before darkness erupts at the base of her skull.

_You have a very beautiful smile..._

Then her eyes roll back, and everything goes mercifully black.

* * *

She lies still and quiet.

She hears distant whispering: harsh, low sounds hissing in the air like so much static interference, no pattern to the changes in tone or key... just random words, churned out and indistinguishable, with no immediately obvious source.

She swallows; her throat hurts terribly.

In spite of the cool breeze that billows in from the window, every inch of Paula feels scorched. The cast on her leg is maddeningly itchy, almost as agitating as the unrelenting hurt of the broken bone beneath. Paula opens her eyes without thinking, wincing at the brilliant light and blinking. Quite without her realizing it, she finds herself lifting a hand to wipe the tears from her cheeks. She tries to raise her head, causing the room to revolve and swivel, making her violently nauseous.

All she can do is wait, minute by helpless minute.

After what feels an eternity, she grows wise to someone entering the room. She hears a quiet clink, like glass or porcelain against metal.

"How long?" she rasps, the words crunching in her throat, scraping the sides like a mouthful of boiled sweets.

"You've been unconscious for three days," supplies Simone, her tone as formal and frigid as the bell of her stethoscope. She has Paula's wrist in a vicelike grip, checking her pulse.

Paula straightens her fingers; the gravel left gashes in her palm, and moving her hand makes the raw edges grind against each other.

"No... how long... the fight..." The words trail off as her voice catches, causing her to cough like a consumptive. The grating of the broken bones in her chest is agonizing. The screaming pain in her head worsens and she closes her eyes in resignation.

"The...? Ah. Once Brother Petros went into "haste" mode, you lasted approximately ten seconds. I'm rather pleased with the results." She picks up a paper cone of... _something_, from the bedside table. "Drink," she orders.

Paula has sense to do as Simone says; instantly, it feels as if sweet slush-ice is being poured into her lungs.

"What... what was that..."

Simone's expression doesn't change. "Analgesic. For the pain."

"No... the weapon... Petros..."

"One of Judith's cleverer contrivances," she provides dutifully. "Standard issue. A high frequency engine lance. He may not be fond of it, Brother Petros is frighteningly effective with it. Under the pressure of supercompressed air, your manubrium just..." Simone casts around for a suitable medical term and, in the end, decides on, "disintegrated."

_Il Dottore _continues to rattle off ailments as though reading from a shopping list: "You suffered a severe concussion, a broken leg, a broken wrist, crushed ribs, bruised lungs, lacerations all over the head and body, fever from the same, a few dislocated vertebrae, blood loss. Nothing serious, not in this day and age. Unless there are unforeseen complications, you ought to make a full recovery."

It takes Paula an uncommonly long period of time to come to grips with Simone's report. She presses the pad of one finger against the massive hematoma on her chest, glances down at the odd angle of her splinted leg, and then the pieces are falling into place, dominoes tumbling one after another after another.

Paula screws her eyes shut.

"I need to speak... to Sister Judith..."

* * *

"No."

Judith's tattoos twitch as her face creases in a scowl. Her breath reeks of nicotine, her barred teeth black and yellow. "Are you the smithy, Paula, or am I?"

"I can't wear this."

"You said you wanted armor that'd save your hide in a fight."

"I fail to see how this qualifies... I've seen less revealing bathing costumes."

"I never took you for a prude as well as a tight-arse."

Paula glances down at herself; it takes every modicum of her willpower not to wilt on the spot.

The armor curves femininely –– more a corset than a cuirass –– a staid design of thorns inlaid along the sides; the collar of her breastplate is high and rigid, guarding her throat, the pauldrons and vambraces running from chin to wrist to waist, less out of a sense of modesty, knowing Sister Judith, than protection. But below a gleaming silver belt, the armor plating abruptly... stops. Her bare legs are long and skinny and bloodless, like a pair of ivory-boned knitting needles tapering to tall boots. The only bits of color are the black and red of the _Vineam Domini _emblazoned across the plates on her shoulders.

"It's intended to allow for a full range of motion, Paula," says Judith by means of explanation. "Quick dodges and the like.

"Defense will not destroy my enemies, Sister Judith."

"Don't give me cheek. You lack the physical presence required for the powerful attacking strikes favored by the likes of Petros. Stupid bastard can't tell his arse from his elbow, but he certainly has you beat in terms of brute strength. You must rely on quickness, cunning and, most of all, _patience_ to best your enemies.

"Besides, I aim to give you an edge in combat that doesn't come from one of _il Dottore's_ bottles," she finishes, with a scorn the aforesaid doctor, Sister Simone, might have resented if she were a person of lesser composure. "Try these."

Judith holds out a pair of long gauntlets as fine as silk gloves, chain underneath and plate on top.

They fit perfectly.

"The particular plackart I've designed for you will protect your vitals, while the gauntlets and gaiters will ensure your ability to keep a grip on your weapons; however, the cut of the chausses and cuirass will leave your femoral exposed."

Paula frowns. "That is less than ideal, considering my quarry."

"Femoral, throat, forehead, in the inseam of your foot... trust me, girl, those devils aren't picky. You could be covered from crown to toe like Brother Jacob, but if a vampire manages to catch you, neither skin nor steel plates will prove much of a hindrance... which is why I have no intention of letting them catch you."

Judith adjusts the clasps and buckles of the breastplate until the armor sits snug across Paula's torso.

"Without the booster," she clarifies, "you will have to find other ways to move quickly under your own power. The fewer heavy armaments dragging you down, the better."

Paula readjusts her posture to accommodate the new weight while Judith tightens the cuirass beneath her armpits.

"Everyone in the Inquisition wears a variation of the same ceremonial armor," the older Inquisitor goes on, "however... for the purposes of combat, I find it's best to leave the choice of helmets to the Knight herself."

Paula peers up into the other woman's tattooed face. "But you're the armorer," she counters, not entirely politely.

Judith snorts. "I can anticipate the sort of backplate your body weight can accommodate, or tell you which sword grip is better for your dominate hand. But I cannot be inside your head, Sister Paula. I cannot see out of your own eyes." The Flemish assassin gestures to the back wall. "Pick somethin'."

Paula's eyes sweep dutifully over the displays: she spies golden helms, intricate onyx headpieces, spiked and dangerous-looking crowns, plated metal turbans...

Finally, she finds what she wants.

Judith arches an eyebrow. "Don't protect much, that."

"Neither does this rest of this accursed ensemble."

"I ain't gonna argue with you, girl. Put it on, then meet me in my office... I'll get the requisition forms sorted..."

Paula nods, and as she does so, she begins to tie a simple black headband about her brow.

* * *

The Sacristy stands at the entrance to the Necropolis of Saint Peter, a few meters from the south side of the Basilica and connected to the churchyard by two corridors that terminate at the tomb of Pius VIII and the Choir Chapel. The walls of the western corridor are decorated in frescoes, honeycombed with tombstones and busts of long-dead popes, oval niches framed in prehistoric yellow.

Paula passes the window facing the Piazza Santa Marta, pausing to watch the swallows and house martins swoop after insects. The branches of nearby trees split the silvery light into faintly scattered shards, dappling the faces of ancient saints. The saplings are centuries old, their bark gnarled and purple, their branches supple, foliage feathery in the gloaming. The western slopes of the seven hills are bathed in sunlight, even as their far sides fall dark under the lengthening shadows.

Paula takes a breath and continues on her walk, mindful of the waning daylight, and with no intention of being late.

Formal summons, she affirms to herself, are not uncommon within the confines of the Vatican.

Formal summons from ill-esteemed Archbishops demanding Paula's immediate presence –– and hers alone –– are.

The missive itself was long and carefully examined with her most suspicious attention. But, finding nothing wanting, and bereft of any official duties that demanded her immediate attention in the meantime, Paula had no choice but to obey the summons.

She knows the Archbishop in question by reputation, his name having passed between d'Annunzio and d'Este with no small degree of distaste. While the Director and the Cardinal have never constituted the measure and standard of judging good character, they are able to navigate the minefield of pontifical politics with an efficacy she can never hope to emulate, and their close working relationship with the Curia –– if not their ministerial acumen –– has to count, she reasons, for something.

According to Cardinal d'Este, the Archbishop at issue is turning out to be a formidable adversary, determined to possess an incredible amount of clerical power no matter the means required to acquire it. The man is, allegedly, egotistical and belligerent at best, and a shameless warmonger at worse. He is despised by most of the College, but even those who loathe him fear his acid wit, his searing intelligence.

What, Paula wonders, could such a man want with her?

She knocks on his office door, and soothes her suspicions by contenting herself that she is, at least, bound to have an answer in a short while.

"Enter."

She does as ordered.

The room is cavernous: a wood-fire blazes cheerily in an ample hearth, illuminating the impressive collection of literature. The cases lining the wall are exquisite, featuring engravings of trees and autumn berries and birds, so intricate they seem to invite touch as much as sight. She notes that certain volumes have been removed recently, judging from the lack of dust on their spines, the books read and returned again with meticulous care, not a title out of place. The furniture is spotless, coordinated in muted natural hues. It looks comfortable and practical but by no means plush. Beyond the window, the Papal Enclave glows in the evening air with its flat roofs and domes and square towers. The pigeons appear to outnumber the red paving slabs.

Fixed in front of the window is an enormous oakwood desk. And seated behind the desk is a man.

Paula's suspicions are immediately confirmed.

It is the same scowling face from the fight in the park.

As the nun watches, the man reaches into one of the drawers and procures a ream of handwritten notes. He licks a suspicious index finger and rifles through the pages until he finds the passage he is looking for...

"If a version of egalitarianism is the correct theory of justice for states," he reads aloud: his voice is deep and rather loud, commanding respect even without shouting, his accent distinctly Florentine, "does it follow logically that it is also the correct theory of justice for the visible and organized manifestations of practices and beliefs in particular social and historical contexts? If, as John Locke would have it said, toleration is "agreeable to both the Gospel and reason," and if Locke defines natural rights as those which one possesses irrespective and independent of institutional arrangement, subjective opinion, and cultural understanding, one may argue a fundamental compatibility, at multiple levels of reference, between the revelation of Christ and the doctrine that all people deserve equal rights and opportunities.

"Consider," he goes on, "for example, the question of punishment. Recall the Gospel of John, Chapter Eight... the Lord did not condone the woman's sin. He commanded her to "go thy way; from henceforth sin no more," and in so doing, He revealed the hypocrisy of the accusers who were more interested in ensnaring the Lord than preserving holiness in their community. And yet, Jesus respected the Mosaic law that prohibited adultery and the punishment that the law prescribed. He also regarded the laws of accusation and testimony, which may not have been satisfied in this case. The response to this situation by Jesus, the Son of God, was not designed to insulate wicked and impenitent individuals from rebuke or discipline in the Christian Age. And indeed, if we were all brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did our mothers conceive us, the Lord's justice should be applied evenhandedly to all and should embody the procedural values of the rule of His law. Therefore, as we all born in sin, the proper egalitarian doctrine prescribes the wholesale and uniform infliction or imposition of a penalty as retribution for our offenses against God..."

The folder snaps shut; Paula's gaze rises to his face.

Before, she observed him at a fifteen yard distance. This time, up close, she can see that the Archbishop's expression is worn from stress, half-moon bruises pulling at his eyes, but as he finishes reading from the draft of her doctoral treatise –– how has he managed to get his hands on a copy? she wonders –– he straightens to his full height. He is uncommonly tall, broad-shouldered and full-statured, respectably bulky without running to fat, managing to make even the somber archbishop black appear resplendent. She guesses that he is in his late twenties to early thirties, at least ten years her senior, but there is something in the latent energy of his posture that makes him appear much younger. His patrician features are sharp and aristocratic, arched brows lending him a clever, calculating appearance. His hair is combed back into a flow of brilliant gold, and his quicksilver eyes catch the light like the blade of a saber coming free from its scabbard. It is not an entirely unhandsome face, albeit one, she suspects, capable of great cruelty.

"I must confess," he states, slapping the volume on his desk; she recognizes her signature on the cover page, "I have never seen Locke wielded with such precision in the interest of visiting retribution. No... to you, all creatures are equally wretched in their transgressions, aren't they?"

"According to the Apostle Paul, _There is neither Jew nor Greek_," she recites, "_slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Jesus Christ_."

"And thus subject to the same Law."

"Yes, Excellency."

"A syllogism, no?" he notes, his voice casual, his expression mildly interested. Only his gray eyes, narrowing shrewdly, betray his incredible investment in the conversation. "All sin is by definition against God's Law. We are all born into the world with sinful natures. Therefore," a seismic shift in tone, the Archbishop's words coming from his mouth like a lash, raw with power, and Paula finds she has to brace herself from rocking backwards, "all human nature is against God's Law."

"The most basic foundation of logic lies in the syllogism," she says, somehow both countering and agreeing with him at the same time. "All men and women are equally created in God's image, equally responsible for sin, equally redeemed by Christ, and equally gifted by God's Spirit for service."

The shadows cast by the trellis beyond the window crisscross his face in neat little diagonals, giving her only diamond-shaped molecules at a time. It stencils a cold, rigid frame around his every breath. She realizes the man's arrogant belligerence and courteous deference are both expressions of one philosophy: the doctrine of weaponized authority. The amount of force and violence necessary to affirm his convictions are no less nor no more than the amount of politeness and consideration necessary to ensure that their discussion is both academically stimulating and ritually civil.

Paula continues, "God is Law. When a soul breaks the Law, it is in sin; under the impetus of grace, if it turns to God, there is penance. When a soul in sin refuses to change, God sends Judgement. To break the Law means to reject grace, to deny Christ, to despise His sacrifice, and to be lost."

He says nothing for a spell, considering her, his gaze hooded and wary. Mystery vaguely stirs and gleams in his pale eyes; she looks over at him, trying to divine whether some secret knowledge lies behind his expression of interest.

"Do you know who I am?"

She does... she knew from the moment she received his missive. "You are the Dean of the Theological Institute of Assisi, Rector of the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, Archbishop of the dioceses of Arezzo-Cortona-Sansepolcro, Fiesole, Pistoia, Prato, and San Miniato. You are the Duke of Florence, and as of two days ago, you serve as Undersecretary of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith." She pauses.

"You are Francesco di Medici."

"Top marks. And you are?"

Paula blinks. "... Excellency?"

He _knows_ who she is... he's been reading from her dissertation...!

"Answer the question, please."

"... I am Paula Souwauski, Archbishop––"

"_Souwauski_..." he parrots. Francesco di Medici drawls the bastardized surname, almost sneering it, though she somehow suspects it is not her, personally, he finds so distasteful. "So many titles for me, and yet you're the one, I think, who has contented herself with hiding behind hers.

"Tell me... how is your arm? Your leg?" He inclines his head almost pityingly, oblivious to the abrupt change in subject. "It has been several months... and it appears you've made a full recovery. It was a short though brutal attack... you should be so fortunate."

Paula sets her gaze a degree over his right shoulder, watching faint motes of dust float in a sluggish halation around his head, spinning slowly in the remnants of purple-threaded evening. Tracing their orbits through the air, Paula can feel her pulse steadying, her entire being hardening to grim resolve.

In spite of her outward calm, however, anger and frustration in the face of the Archbishop's feigned nonchalance throb from her head into her heart, where they settle into her aorta and reshape themselves into a gritty, sedimentary bitterness, the kind of resentment that makes one capable of poor decisions.

"Why?" she asks, the word slipping out before she can choke it back.

"... I beg your pardon?"

_Non progredi est regredi_..."Why should I be so fortunate?" She sounds contemptuous and she doesn't care. "The injuries left me bedridden for weeks. The old breaks still ache in the cold and the damp. My partner fasted to the brink of starvation in an effort to atone for it."

In the ensuing silence, she can only hope he is simply mulling over her words, and not debating how best to throw her over the Aurelian Wall without attracting undue attention.

But then he smiles, a slight upturn of his lips, more tooth than benevolence, his eyes not warm in the slightest.

"You're _fortunate_," he reiterates pointedly, "because Brother Petros didn't inadvertently kill you, Sister. The boy doesn't know his own strength."

"Forgive me, but arbitrating a sparring session _without_ the use of artificial enhancements might have foreclosed the possibility of serious injury, Excellency. As it was, your intervention made that impossible."

"Of course... I was curious to see how you planned to attend to the situation." He grunts: "To be perfectly frank, I had every intention of questioning you in private, but upon our arrival at the Parco del Colle Oppio, I changed my mind almost immediately." Amused, spinning out the moment to wrest the last lingering iota of pleasure from it, his silver eyes alight on Paula, her color unaccountably high as she returns his gaze. It doesn't help that he is staring at her in a way that is bold and vaguely proprietary. "Aren't you at all curious as to why?"

"In my experience, people only ask questions of that nature with the expectation of an answer in the affirmative."

The Archbishop's long fingers tap against the knuckle opposite. "That sounds rather a lot like deflection."

"Common sense, Excellency."

"Of course. Distrust every motivation, every intention. Especially your own, because if you reject yourself first, then you deprive others of the privilege. That allows you at least some degree of control, does it not?"

"This is not about me, Archbishop."

"Isn't it?" He brings his face nearer to hers, as though to take some reading in her eyes. Finding, evidently, the thing he is searching for, his smile lengthens a fraction.

"Grown men quiver in fear at the mere mention of Brother Petros's name. Any clergyman in possession of his wits would have cowered beneath the presence of Cardinal d'Este, not to mention the Duchess of Milan and the Duke of Florence, and yet this small, slender, silver-haired teenager dares to defy us? A casual observer would think you simpleminded, Sister Paula; however, the fact you wade through academic pursuits are though they are little more arduous than clods of knee-high grass disabuses me of the notion. Moreover... I recall now how you looked when you walked out to face us, head held high, eyes meeting mine in defiance. At the time, I wavered somewhere between outrage, disbelief, and admiration. I admit I had no intention of interfering in your little exercise, yet I could hardly allow the opportunity to pass me by once it made itself known."

"Opportunity?"

"It is only through adversity, the degradation of the soul, that one can know who one really is; when all artifice is stripped away, leaving one bare. You did not shy from the fight, Sister Paula. You did not protest the unjust terms of the engagement, though you would have been well within your rights to do so. Pain, I think, holds no terror for the wise and the brave."

Paula looks at the older man and, rather than angry and insulted by her candidness, or even mildly contrite faced with the enormity of the suffering he has caused, she finds him... quiet. Content, wearing an expression that would have been cold and cruel on any other face, his saber-silver eyes tapered with mild amusement and greed and no small degree of excitement. The realization dawns on the nun: here is a man for whom there is always a reason, a method behind every penstroke and whispered secret.

Archbishop di Medici wasn't testing _her _that day in the Parco del Colle Oppio.

He was testing a weapon.

Slowly, Paula's breath evens. She blinks, her eye blazing with indignation no less vehement than before... but contained, brought to a faint simmer, her focus narrowing.

"Brave..." she murmurs.

"More courage than strength, perhaps." He waves a hand dismissively. "No matter. It is nothing a few more years of training won't see to."

"I am a mere Knight. I have no ambition, no aspirations, and certainly no courage."

He snorts. "And no self-regard, evidently."

"I will accept whatever labors the Church sees fit to bestow upon me with grace, Excellency."

"I am of the opinion, Sister Paula, that while Christian grace is an ultimate aim, it is not the primary aim, of life; the primary aim is to live more abundantly at any cost. Grace can come later."

_Blasphemy._

It is an abomination, thinks Paula suddenly, to be standing here and having this casual conversation –– with an _Archbishop_, no less –– about matters which are nothing if not heretical and idolatrous in nature.

Paula breathes deeply through her mouth, pushing aside her frustration. Anger replaces it, momentarily, followed by a deep disbelief at just how insolent he is, how audacious... how _confident_.

"Your own ambitions are no secret."

"Of course not. The longer I live, the more I've come to realize that self interest is the natural state of mankind. Pride is the keystone in the arch of human will." His eyes are dark and hard, with no fear in them, no kindness and no guilt.

_Pride... a cardinal sin... _"There are many who strive to defend the sanctity of choice sins and then expect you to be impressed with their efforts."

His lips twitch in a smirk. "Is that what you think of me?"

"Do you really care what I think, Your Grace?"

"Yes," he says, without hesitation.

The room seems to tremble with the precision resonance of a tuning fork.

"Do you always employ such methods to get others to behave as you wish?"

"Only when it is necessary, Sister Paula, and only when the effort is well worth my time."

"Would now be one such occasion?"

"It would."

"Why."

"Because I find you intriguing. Now... answer my question."

She glances down at herself: her in simple muslin and linen cloth, him in rich black and purple silks. She intones: "Far from being aloof or detached from power, power is what matters to you above all else, Excellency –– the end of power, the purpose of power, the taming of power, and the unleashing of power for true flourishing. The juxtaposition of pride and the pain of being forsaken strikes me as offering insights into the nature of men and their weaknesses."

The Archbishop's eyes twinkle. Paula finds, then, much to her own surprise, that she has no desire to resist the attraction of being respected by this man.

"My estimation of you only increases," he murmurs in admiration. "So many of the Mother Church have forgotten that ministry is, at its heart, a war. Our creed will not survive if we proceed with a peacetime mentality. The fundamental battle of our Holy Order is not with the the vampire scourge, and the endurance of such a narrative has bred discontent within the ranks... idleness within the Curia. The significance of the paradigmatic narrative of the Church versus the Empire is that it facilitates recall for both teller and listener. Such a tale enables us to store, remember, and reproduce the crusading spirit... it grants us the security of being right, of being in control, while blinding us to the real battle.

"Our true war, Sister Paula, is one of the shifting values of the surrounding culture. It is a struggle with resistance, with _disloyalty_, and above all, with those recalcitrant souls who don't seem to esteem the Gospel. It is a fight for the success of the ministries of the Church. It is the constant struggle over resources and personnel to accomplish our ultimate mission... the extermination of vampire-kind."

She considers him, mulling over his words. "You are not what one might call a forward-facing member of the Curia."

"I'm pleased to see we understand each other."

"And the Duchess Sforza?"

His words, when they come, are cool and cutting: "What of her?"

"She, too, stands at cross purposes to the College. Like you, she was... _scouting_ us, that day several months ago."

"My Lord Uncle was certainly doing his damndest to make it seem that way," Archbishop di Medici scoffs. The dark blue shadows below his eyes do precious little to mitigate the choler in his gaze. "Like hell I would ever let Caterina lay a hand on one of my Inquisitors."

Paula frowns.

Di Medici appears to catch himself. "Forgive me... one of _Emanuele_'s Inquisitiors. Besides, our knights are hardly her... _type_. The riff-raff and rabble she's taken to surrounding herself with these days tend to be half-cocked and odd, their eyes gleaming with deviltry. And in truth, my relationship with my sister is so replete with mistrust that it has become, in many meaningful ways, irretrievably broken." He growls, "Prelates are a savage breed, Sister Paula. If you want camaraderie, join the Inquisition and learn to kill. If you want a lifetime of temporary alliances with peers who will glory in your every failure, join the Curia."

"You respect Archbishop Sforza, Eminence."

"I envy her. I envy her easy grace, her comfort in this cutthroat profession, her excuses for introspection, her ear-marked receptacles for every just antagonism and noble loyalty." His saber-colored eyes narrow shrewdly. "She is not unlike your own partner... the ambassador's son. With Orsini's good breeding, His Eminence d'Este took to him instantly. Over the years, he has grown into something of a folk hero; Brother Petros's blunt manner and honest character are refreshing changes in this institution. Though he seems bent, rather ruthlessly, on destroying all enemies against God and the Church, when he achieves this desired end, he does not relish the moment as would a man of lesser virtue. Instead, he mourns the loss of any great soldier and musters enough compassion to be not only fair-minded but also fair-hearted. He is a man of upstanding moral integrity, more fool him..."

"He is merciful."

"You wax indignant on account of your shared history, but hindsight eventually convinces most of us that altruism is a virtue. Conveniently, weakness can imitate strength if bound properly, just as cowardice can imitate heroism if given nowhere to flee."

She starts. "Excellency?"

"He is too soft, Sister Paula. There is too much of love at his center."

"He seeks to project honor in all his labors."

"Yes," says the Archbishop with the ghost of a sneer, "When you are on the battlefield, honor will mean so much. You will die with a blade between your ribs, secure in the knowledge that you fought with _manners_."

He layers cynicism atop his disdain, like laying laughter over pain –– it is a contempt of an uglier stripe.

Paula's hand knuckles at her side. "There are those individuals who would readily die for their cause, and we say they have made the ultimate sacrifice. We call them martyrs, and we never doubt their sincerity."

"You speak of sincerety and honor, Sister Paula, but unless I'm very much mistaken, the boy did paralyze one of d'Annunzio's knights, did he not?"

Her expression briefly registers a somber and unsmiling glower. Neither Petros nor Paula have spoken of the incident in all the five years since it happened. "I..." she chews over the words for a moment, catching the inside of her lip and tasting blood. "That was... an unfortunate accident, Excellency."

"So I hear. However, unlike Emanuele, I haven't the patience for infighting. What scant few details are available regarding the incident do not endear Brother Petros to me in the slightest, Sister. Unless you'd care to correct my version of events?"

"My counterpart was unjustly manoeuvred into attacking Brother Thaddeus," she provides diplomatically. "Brother Petros was... coerced, by the Director."

"Coerced? By a man half his size and possessing a mere fraction of his strength?"

"Director d'Annunzio is our superior, Excellency. We are bound to our vows of obedience."

"If Emanuele felt the need to resort to intimidation in order to ensure Brother Petros's compliance, either the boy is grossly undisciplined or Emanuele d'Annunzio's orders were unreasonable. Or," he considers carefully, "the nature of the Director's _coercion_ sat poorly with your partner?"

His tone brooks little doubt that he knows the answer already. "With respect, Excellency, I am not in the habit of indulging rhetorical questions."

"Indeed?" He frowns fiercely. "In which case, Paula, it may interest you to know that, while we are on the subject of things that Inquisitors are generally not in the habit of, I may well count _fraternization _among that category."

She stares at the Archbishop, her eyes wide, her jaw rigid as her mind slowly shifts gears from keen-edged protest to vigilant suspicion.

The Archbishop elaborates: "When one's cohort partner loiters outside one's bedroom after Compline every night for the past three and a half years, even the least perspicuous soul is bound to notice."

He inclines his head slightly as he watches the corner of Paula's mouth twitch, her dark eyes sliding, for a moment, out of focus, her posture so rigid the slightest tremor is instantly evident.

"Are you fucking him?"

She fails to disguise the mangled expression of outrage and annoyance that involuntarily appears on her face. Conversely, the Archbishop simply regards her patiently; he gives her a long, consummately neutral look, stroking his thumb against a knuckle, up and down, smooth and slow. His customary scowl does not change, neither flattening nor creasing further, which Paula surmises to mean he is reserving judgement.

"You seem... displeased," he notes, once he intuits an answer is nonforthcoming.

"The question is insulting."

"Forgive me. Offence was not my intention. But you must acknowledge, Sister Paula, given the circumstances, it is not an entirely unreasonable avenue of inquiry."

"... No, it is not."

"And?"

"He is a colleague. That is all."

A quick, valedictory nod. "Good," Francesco says firmly. "Entanglements of anything less than a professional nature are weaknesses... you would do well to avoid them. Or, if you cannot, as I suspect is the case, learn to compartmentalize until you have minimized any accompanying emotional expenditure."

Paula latches on to his meaning with burr-like tenacity. "_As you suspect is the case_..." she repeats carefully.

"Against your otherwise immaculate judgement, Sister Paula, you care for him. And he for you. He was standing guard outside your cell all those nights."

It is not a question. "... Yes."

"I would know why."

Paula can feel her stomach churning to water. "The Director has been known to try to use means to compel Brother Petros to following commands my counterpart at times regards as... unmerited," she says in her flattest voice.

Francesco grunts again, though looks a little more thoughtful, appraising. "I suspect the Director was largely successful. It would appear Brother Petros is not indifferent to your fate... nor you to his. And the incident five years ago...?"

"Brother Thaddeus was under orders to carve out my eye."

"_Emanuele's _orders," he surmises, not incorrectly.

He inclines his head, as though about to say more. The words are there, just behind his teeth. He is about to release them when Paula's mouth thins to a bloodless, mean little slash. She resists the urge to reach up and adjust her collar, to better hide the tract of white skin once marred by the Director's bruising grip.

In an instant, a jolt of understanding moves through Francesco, the sobering clarity of someone who, wandering in a mist, pauses only to realize that he has stopped inches from a cliff edge.

To their shared surprise, his breath stops in his throat. His hands cease their incessant tapping, fingers suspended above his knuckles. In the sudden quiet, they both hear him take his next breath, far slower than its distant predecessor.

He does not blink or look away, but it seems as though his mind retreats from behind his eyes for a while to think, taking counsel with no one save his own conscience.

"I was but a novice myself, Sister," he says vaguely, after a long pause, "but I remember when d'Annunzio brought you to Rome. You knew nothing of etiquette or Church custom. You arrived wearing peasant motley, nose red from the cold. A frail slip of a girl. No doubt our estimable Director would have liked nothing more than to chew you to splinters like the jackal that he is..." He pauses, then, observing her reaction. "Does that surprise you?"

"Does what surprise me, Excellency?"

"For me to speak so of a colleague... indeed, of a direct superior. More, for the bastard child of His Holiness to harbor such resentments against his own Church?"

"No," she answers honestly. "I am not ignorant of the fact that there exist in this institution principles which are unfairly applied in different ways to different people."

"Yes," he agrees, "there are always two standards." Somehow, his silver eyes darken further, the venom in his words more deadly than a viper's bite. "People called my mother a whore, but called my father His Holiness. The fertile minds in the Curia have managed to create an indulgence for every imaginable situation and every imaginable sin. For a price, special dispensation can be given to permit trade with an infidel, or allow a marriage between two first cousins, or buy stolen goods... or even turn a blind eye to trespasses which are truly gratuitous and perverse, loathsome to every law of decency circumscribed by both Man and by God.

"For those willing to suffer the indignity, even an illegitimate child can be made legitimate. Bearing all this in mind, our labels, Sister Paula, fall flat... they are toothless insults. But I long ago learned where certain words have bite: if one is not legitimate –– if one is _unclean ––_ one can be dismissed as an unintended thing... a pitiable, regrettable accident."

_An accident. _He utters the words so casually that it takes her several breaths to process what he says.

"I do not intend to remain an unintended thing, Sister Paula. Nor, do I think," he levels on her with crushing intensity, "do you."

"I am only a––"

"Stop it. Those are the words of a fear-corroded creature living on borrowed motions and borrowed time. Those are the words of what Emanuele _wants_ you to be. It is evident to me," he evangelizes, not overloud but with enough throaty reverberation to rattle the window glass, "that he desires nothing more than to make his subordinates lonely and desperate, fearful that their lives have no meaning. Until the day finally comes when they yearn for the bullet, if only someone else will pull the trigger."

"I do not yearn for death."

"Yes, you do."

"You're wrong."

"You do..." he goes on, but reflective, almost wondering, "because I once did, too."

At that moment, Paula realizes with a jolt that the shaming tirade she expected the Archbishop to deliver when she first stepped through his door has been delivered after all –– skillfully and subtly. The only difference is that the man has managed, quite without her noticing it, to absolve her of blame and spare her any further humiliation.

"Death may be only a matter of time," he insists, "but _life_, Paula... life is a matter of choice. Life is a matter of resolve. And you have more resolve than every other soul in this Church."

"I..."

"Everything this institution conspired to throw at you, every torture the Inquisition visited upon your body and mind, every new torment my predecessor imagined, you endured with calm and patience and gratitude, and a frankly breathtaking sureness of faith.

"You were summoned here this evening because I have made a decision, Sister Paula. A decision of great importance for the life of the Inquisition. For her future. Meeting you in person has only strengthened my position. When I succeed my uncle as Minister, I intend to name you my new Chief. My new Director."

He throws the last sentence away so casually that Paula doesn't notice it at first.

"... Excellency?"

"I am going to make you Emanuele's heir apparent, _Deo volente_."

She hopes she merely misheard him. "You... you can't do that, Archbishop."

"Why not."

"You are not the Minister of Doctrine. Alfonso d'Este is."

_"Pro tempore," _he divulges in conspiratorial Latin.

"Excellency, this is dangerous. I... why..."

"Because, Sister Paula, I want you on my side."

She struggles to make sense of the statement. "You want my loyalty––"

"I want _you_... your belief, your discipline, your strength." Pausing to observe the effect of his words, the Archbishop smiles thinly. "You appear unconvinced."

"I have learned well to be wary of men in power bartering for the fidelity of their subordinates," she assures him with as much raw contempt as she can manage while still remaining ostensibly civil.

Francesco sobers immediately. "I understand the enormity of what it is I am asking of you, Sister Paula," he intones gravely. In that moment, she has never seen such promise, such _power_, in another man's eyes. "To be sworn loyalty is to be granted the frightful license to ruin not only myself, but all under my patronage." He sighs, looking, for the barest moment, almost mournful. "I cannot promise that there will not be more times when you will be faced with crude assaults on your honor, or with solicitations that will be naked attempts to cheapen your integrity. Being obedient is one thing, but even Jesus took a rope to those who disregarded the boundaries of his Father's house. Your house has boundaries too, Sister Paula. All I am offering you is leave to do what you must to defend them."

"My mother was a child," he says quietly. "'A knight's wife,' they say of her. She was nothing of the sort. Bona Sforza and Livia Farnese were beloved companions of His Holiness, _maîtresse-en-titre_ in all but title, but my mother was a nun... a novice, at the advent of Gregorio's pontificate. When she could no longer hide the fact of her pregnancy, she was expelled from the convent and given to Giulio di Giuliano di Medici as a consort. Better," the Archbishop barely controls a snarl; it comes out as a wicked, curling tightening of his lips, "to say the Pope's illegitimate son is the progeny of the House of Medici... than a bastard born to an adolescent nun out of wedlock. If values and practice failed to serve as a basis for honor, surely strong dynastic connections could. "

Paula registers a leap in her pulse. "Excellency... why are you telling me this..."

"Because when I say I want you on my side, Paula... I wish it to be with the understanding that I entreat only with the utmost sincerity... and with the deepest of sympathies." He goes on: "My mother's name was Simonetta Cattaneo. You won't have heard of her... Duke Giuliano had her rechristened. She was the bravest woman I've ever known. Fiercely resilient, dignified, intelligent beyond measure. And strong... stronger than every slathering hyena skulking in San Pietro. Tell me, Inquisitor..." he ventures, cool and cerebral, "what sort of servant of God would I be, if I failed to reward the strength and faith of my flock, in the same manner my predecessors failed to reward Simonetta Cattaneo?"

"The Curia will never accept it."

"Let me worry about the Curia. Do this thing for me, Paula, and I will lay the world at your feet."

"Your Grace..." she shakes her head. "I am a peasant. I have no titles. I have no family, no past."

"The past is over. The only important thing is to look forward."

She is not sure she agrees with either statement. "I am a poor, plain, unworthy sinner. Glory was never intended for one such as I."

"The inequities of which you complain are inseparable from our fallen natures... neither you nor I will ever be free from them in this world. Your namesake, Paul, felt them no less than you... perhaps more, because he was more advanced in grace."

"Archbishop di Medici... Director d'Annunzio... he called me a parasite," she says, invoking a kinder term than the one Emanuele used. _Zdzirą._ "He often asked me to tell him how the world has benefited from my existence."

"And your reply?" prompts Francesco, expression schooled to inscrutable neutrality.

"I… had no answer. I still do not."

"I see."

Their earlier conversation has abolished so much of her antagonism that as she looks at him now, she finds herself able to regard him with near-perfect equanimity.

"Excellency..."

"Yes?"

"If what d'Annunzio said is true... then why me."

"Why you," he parrots.

"Why did he kill my parents?" she asks. "Why did he pick me for this station, if I am so wretched?"

"Is it not obvious? Because no one would miss you," he says simply. "Because the Kazimierz operation was so gravely mismanaged that it allowed d'Annunzio to concoct any story he so desired regarding your novitiate. Because the Inquisition had not taken into account the likely possibility of losing a knight that day, and the then-Deputy Director had to act quickly to return to the Vatican with his pride, and his ranks, intact.

"You know it was not a case of rewarding overwhelming qualification or currying political influence," he goes on. "You've always known. D'Annunzio had your name. He had your family's name. The Vatican's censuses are extremely precise, and the most cursory search in the world was all Emanuele needed to discover where he might scoop you up. He knew you lived near Kazimierz. He knew you planned to attend the local university. He knew your parents would prove of little hindrance in disposing. In the end, you, Paula –– the correct age for a novice, a genius intellect, the daughter of two lower middle-class, ostensibly inconsequential business owners –– were simply in the right place at the right time."

_You've always known._

Nothing Francesco says comes as any astonishing revelation. It is a suspicion she has harbored since Poland, even if she balked at looking at it, at truly seeing it.

She feels a dull, dreadful acceptance –– almost an absolution –– pressing like a lodestone on her chest.

The Archbishop, soon to be Cardinal, regards her with an odd, contemplative expression.

"Tell me what you want."

She just stares at him, uncomprehending.

"Regarding our estimable Director," he clarifies. "What do you need me to do?"

Paula shivers convulsively, a feverish spasm of her shoulders. At first, it is a shudder of slight shame, shying from the words as though ducking beneath a wayward wasp. But the longer the fret buzz sustains, the more she realizes, by some indefinable, imperceptible means, that it is as much a shudder of reverence as revulsion –– his words are both poignant and dreadful, tender and terrifying... perhaps because of the promise that accompanies them...

_"Chcę się go pozbyć," _she breathes.

Francesco di Medici does not hesitate. He nods gravely.

"Very well," he intones. "Consider it done.

"Pledge your loyalty to me, Sister Paula, and I swear on the Lord's name... you will be the greatest soldier of God this institution has ever seen."

* * *

The silence, save for the dry-mouthed murmur of a midnight prayer, is curiously oppressive, charged with expectation.

Furtive peeks between the slats of Paula's shutters reveal a cold, quiet night, as still as the air in her cell. The banners on the walls of the Santa Maria della Pietà hang in folds, as do the flags on the Circus of Caligula. Every now and again, if she pays close attention, a rat races low to the ground, looking for cover, or a door slams in the distance.

Gradually, the eerie sense of suspense coalesces into distinct sensory impressions: a faint shimmer in the air, a tinge –– almost tasted more than seen –– of movement through the red-limned moonlight. Paula defines the nearly subliminal sounds as rustling, as if she is walking through a forest during a wind storm.

Drawn by the sound of creaking hinges, the nun turns and is not, she realizes, entirely surprised to find Petros idling in her doorway.

Out of uniform, he is dressed in all black, from tunic to trousers, like widower's weeds, as though obeying some tacit strictures of mourning. His shirt is unbuttoned with careless grace at the neck, strands of his hair bursting from the braid at the back of his head. His boots are scuffed. His cheeks are very pink.

As though he ran the distance, she thinks.

"He's gone." Petros grins broadly.

Paula looses a long breath. "Gone…?"

"The Director. The Undersecretary had him reassigned to the countryside, to the province of Pannonia. Paula..." he says solemnly, tipping his head in emphasis until strands of blue shadow his expression. "He will never torment you again. It's... it's finally over. He's gone!"

The somber hush of consequence saturates the air between them, like the quiet of Sabbath. Paula wills herself to breathe, to blink –– to _see_ the moon-bathed room. Her chest aches, as though her breastbone is bruised, but the rest of her... she doesn't feel anything. She can't feel her legs. Her toes. The tips of her fingers are numb, too.

The Undersecretary.

_Francesco _.

The air dances in front of Paula like a high-summer heat shimmer. She inhales, dragging the scent of cold stone and dust into her lungs. She tastes the merest trace of Petros's aftershave at the back of her throat, clean and sharp, like menthol, and it grounds her.

Pannonia is a region of the Papal State bounded on the north and east by the river Danube, coterminous westward with Noricum and southward with Dalmatia and upper Moesia. It is as far east as one can go without crossing the border of the vampire's Empire.

_Consider it done._

_Do this thing for me, Paula, and let me lay the world at your feet._

Paula rubs at her brows with her thumb and forefinger, momentarily shielding her expression, and when she squares her shoulders –– no longer bearing the weight she has tried so hard for so long to shed –– she finds herself lifting her chin.

"D'Annunzio has not tormented me in three years" she says in a tone of mild surprise, indulging him. "You have seen quite tidily to that."

Petros continues to smile stupidly, beaming from ear to ear; she studies him, peering up until she meets his eyes. She can distinguish tiny striations in the light blue irises, like seams of silver in a mine.

"The coward wouldn't dare," he proclaims boldly. He reaches for the tips of her fingers and spins her in a circle, not allowing her the opportunity to refuse the contact.

She yanks her hand from his grip. "What," she hisses with precious little concealed hostility, "in blazes are you––"

_"Vieni a ballare con me."_ His tone, uncharacteristically quiet, curiously serious, makes the entreaty ambiguous in a way she can't describe.

Aside from cocking his head in a comical expression of anticipation, he doesn't move as he waits for her answer. His attitude is not agitated or ill at ease, his gaze resting on her hands, which are now tightly laced in her lap, his expression all the while patiently reflective.

"Have you taken leave of your senses, Brother Petros?"

"I have it on good authority I hadn't any to begin with."

Her back molars rasp against one another. "Do not trifle with me."

"I wouldn't dare."

"Wouldn't you? What do you call this, then?"

"Dancing. This is cause for celebration, Sister Paula!" Petros takes her hand, resting his other palm on her back and pulling her into the proper posture. She very nearly jolts out of his hold, staggering like a spooked deer; the meager size of her cell, however, forecloses any serious attempt at retreat.

"I don't know how." She grasps at his shoulder for purchase, groping in a futile bid for balance. "You _know_ I don't know how."

The insufferable boy stares at her for a moment, and then a low chuckle rumbles from his chest. "I can show you."

It takes a few moments of stumbling before he settles into some semblance of a rhythm. Perfectly befitting, Petros exaggerated his own mastery; he can navigate a waltz with adequate competence, but he is not the sort of exceptional dancer who can seamlessly adapt to his partner's uncoordinated lurching. Moreover, he moves at a _painfully_ slow tempo, giving her time to pick up each foot in the dance step. But every time he attempts to turn her, Paula's legs tangle together, the unfamiliar motions catching her unawares.

It is more than inappropriate... it is thoroughly humiliating. She tells him so.

"Paula," chides Petros, _"si fueris Romae––"_

She scowls fiercely. "I'm Polish."

"Surely you have dancing...?" he probes, his thin, interrogative eyebrows contributing to the question.

"Yes. Krakowiak. Or the Hopak, if you fancy a pair of patellar fractures."

"I suppose I could conjure a half-decent tarantella... do you have a tambourine?"

She hasn't the patience to indulge his teasing, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. The mere mental image of Brother Petros skipping in circles and striking the jingles on his hip is utterly mortifying. "If you're going to insist on saying stupid things and asking stupid questions," she mutters darkly, "I would prefer to keep my own company, thank you." She frowns, hiding her discomfited expression by glaring at his chest, acutely aware of the fact that they are waltzing as though proceeding through porridge. But Petros is patient, his hand pressed lightly at her waist, turning her in a slow circle. "And when, exactly, did you learn to dance?"

"I'm Italian... it's mandatory."

"We haven't any music."

"We don't need music. Think of it in terms of sparring, Sister Paula."

"Sparring..." she repeats, so surprised she glances away from his ribcage and peers up at his face. He doesn't look flippant, or teasing, or sarcastic. But there is suppressed amusement in the way his blue eyes are tapered.

He replies so softly she can barely hear it: "You've a pair of emeici in hand, and vast numbers of heretics laying before you... the moment you step among them, you act entirely on instinct, mowing them down in droves..."

The absolute unlikelihood of it causes the repressed anger and anxiety in her gaze to cool by degrees, replaced by something less identifiable. Paula moves backwards into his hand, which is proper waltz technique, and grips his shoulder tighter, which is not. And as he begins to move slightly faster, Petros's infernal grin fades; he watches his step, concentrating intently, for a moment entirely focused on her presence.

Paula mutters defensively, "If that were the case, at any moment you might accidentally lock eyes with some errant heretic, stumble, and fling me across the room. Besides," she goes on, scowling, "you know I have never been one to treat combat with such frivolity."

"Of course I know," he returns. He smiles at her, then, shyly, those blue eyes, always so accursedly observant, soft with empathy. She has seen Brother Petros looking unsure of himself on scant few occasions, and the rarity has a recurrent tendency of tugging annoyingly at her sympathies. "But who is to say dancing is in any way a frivolous pursuit, Paula?"

Her gaze meets his and holds steady. "How might you classify this little exploit of yours, if not by some foolishness?"

He pauses in lieu of an immediate answer, his step faltering, and Paula recognizes a casting about for delicacy in his hesitation. The tilt to his face, the pout of his thin upper lip has no counterpart in the controlled, taciturn masks she has grown accustomed to seeing from the other knights, from Jacob's grave self-possession to Simone's scholarly air. Gallant she has always thought him, but never before has she registered just how... _guileless _he looks in the throes of genuine wonder.

"... Observance?" he proposes.

Once again she divines a minute shift in his tone –– though she can hardly characterize it –– and he stands up a little straighter, his shoulders braced, the top of his head a mere handful of inches from scraping the ceiling.

"Although," he goes on, "I suppose it's rather unorthodox to _dance _instead of standing on ceremony."

"Brother Petros," she murmurs, more to herself than to him, "neither one of us has ever been entirely orthodox."

Paula lets silence punctuate her statement, somewhat surprised at coming to this conclusion. For a long moment, they stare past each other's shoulders, breathing in tandem, as if they share a pulse, a train of thought, a common sense. From time to time one of their shoes scuffs dryly on the cold stone, the silence between them rippling audibly, like a tiny fish breaking the surface of a pond. Moonlight bleaches the blue glint of his hair and washes clean the sharp contours of his face. The blacks of his eyes are bright.

Their proximity invites a profound peace, something so peculiarly foreign to her it takes Paula a fair while to recognize it for what it is. The light evening breeze stirs the small leaves of the trees that cluster about the shutters, making the shadows shift on the stone floor. For a moment, she pushes aside the thought of the standards of honesty or modesty; something inside her breaks free from the traps and tangles of the propriety in which she has been steeped all these years, sheared clean like the calving of a glacier. There is some rhythm, some ecstasy in this odd, stumbling, perambulatory sway that expresses a provenance which touches depths and rises beyond physical confines as old as consciousness, yet ever renewed, like the tumbling blooms and mandalas of stars in a midnight sky. A part of Paula, in that moment, is given to know just a little of what serenity is like, something she has long found herself yearning for, but never believing herself worthy of it.

She stops dancing so suddenly Petros nearly treads on her foot.

And then he raises his voice to a volume that would have knocked over a person of weaker constitution like a ninepin: "What's wrong, Paula?"

A palm upon his chest stays his words. Paula's heart lurches in hard strikes against her ribs, and the longer she maintains contact, the more she can feel his pulse spurred to an equally intemperate pace. Her thoughts and physical body feel disunited, as though the latitudes of touch and taste are only a home with which her mind has been associated but by no means bound.

Petros swallows so violently his entire chest spasms in a hiccough. "Paula? Is something––"

She says nothing, choosing instead to touch a loose strand of hair, a stray lock come free from its braid and left to tap against his cheek. She can smell its clean, astringent scent.

And then she feels it; his gaze, brushing her face in a curious little gesture, full of concern. A caress without touch –– achingly kind, desperately gentle. He is trying to comfort her, though he doesn't have the faintest idea how...

Paula's throat tightens, and deep within her wells an emotion she can scarcely credit… longing, tenderness, fierce loyalty.

Grief, even... grief at the stubborn endurance of his compassion.

Decent. He is too decent.

Francesco is right.

This world will destroy him.

Sorrow surges unimaginably close to her skin's surface, ready to be drawn out like a final plan of retreat.

They stand there for a fairly long while, conversation impossible. Two solitary embers, isolated in their separate pits, far away but fanned by the same wind. The moon beyond the window is fiercely naked –– the sky divested of the cover of cloud.

Eventually, she begins to stroke his hair, gently, turning her head to savor the feel of it twining between her fingers. It is long and fine –– such soft, beautiful blue hair...

"What... what are you doing..." he breathes, his eyes wide with alarm, long-fingered hands spread out on his thighs, no longer touching her. He takes a deep breath, his tongue staggering in his throat, and doesn't move. She acknowledges a stirring of pity, because behind the façade, he seems savagely frightened. "Paula, what's wrong..."

"Nothing..." Cradling his face, standing on her toes, she rises to brush her lips against his cheek –– it is as high as she can reach. The gesture is tentative, instinctively afraid of making him feel trapped or guilty. She touches him very carefully, with superficial, lingering caresses as if to extract some essence, some strong salve, to inoculate him against the wrought-up intensity of suffering she cannot otherwise forbear to let him glimpse.

Her cool hand rests on his skin for a moment, gentle as a moth. "Everything is fine."

She kisses his throat, in the hollow of his collar. His blush is so fierce it feels like pressing her face to a brick kiln. He smells of soap, skin, the faint burnish of armor polish, and his every breath warms the top of her head, a crowning chaplet of hesitant sighs.

"I... I don't understand..." The words are full of confusion, desperation... sadness.

She grows wise to a burst of affection in her chest as she tilts her chin skyward, spine arching, closing the distance between them with far more hesitancy than she does most everything else in her life. Her hands slide to either side of his face, cradling his cheeks and pulling him into a slight stoop. His eyes are so much lighter than her own, with only the faintest glimmer of gray to betray that they are not wholly white but a pale, vitreous blue.

She ghosts her lips over his for just a moment. She tastes him, feels him swallow, hears the low, dry, terrified sound of it.

Of all her innermost yearnings, the ache for an absent intimacy cuts, perhaps, the most keenly, like the last gasping breath around a lump in the throat, unable to be swallowed.

They are Inquisitors. Hatred and fury are the fires in which they burn, and they burn hotter, she knows, than the hunger for power over men or even for the forgiveness of God. It vaporizes delicacy and leaves behind only a slag of anger and lust and loneliness, the former two doing little to blunt the latter's sharpest edge.

And among the lonely, Petros is, perhaps, the loneliest of all.

For him, there is only God.

After she pulls away, he stares at her for what feels like an eternity; she wonders, absently, if perhaps she has made a grave and unforgivable miscalculation. A furious blush colors the prow of his nose, but the rest of him has gone alarmingly pale. His face twitches, flickering between tiny expressions, every stage of understanding playing over a fistful of moments…

But then he is pushing her against the wall, forcing her to stand tip-toe lest she loose contact with the floor altogether.

And then he is kissing her.

He presses his mouth against hers with such inept, clumsy, desperate force that her lip splits and the edge of a stone digs into her spine, certain to leave a bruise there.

He surges forward so ravenously that Paula's limbs threaten to give out. His hands rake over her neck, her face, her hair, questing and curious and conscious only of the impulse to touch. Her own find his waist and cling there. She has never seen such wretched anguish in a man's eyes before, such stark, hurting loneliness.

Paula knows she looks the same.

She braces against his hips, giving herself the leverage she needs to return the pressure with equal fervor.

"Slow down," she mutters.

Swallowing a groan, he relents. Their mouths slant against each other, working in tandem, steady and deep. She takes great, heaving breaths. He takes many small ones. From a man who frequently shouts at volumes to wake the dead, the tiny, tentative sounds are almost unnerving.

She circles his wrists, rough enough to make his breath catch, gentle enough to have him opening his knees, cradling her hips with his long legs. Her tongue slips inside his mouth, pushing between the wet bone of teeth; he mumbles something too soft to hear.

He closes his eyes, then... squeezes them so tight the lids turn white.

Paula wonders who he sees.

She wonders whose face he has conjured from the cunningly manipulated facets and angles. She wonders who she has become in his mind's eye: a childhood friend, an old enemy; a professor, a prelate... perhaps the silver-haired man who accompanied the Duchess that day...

There are no twangs of envy. There is no covetous twist of emotion. Another time, Paula might have had some thoughts about it. But feelings are muted in her; she does not believe herself capable of love. It has in it a certain diffidence, a desire to lavish, an eagerness to do good and to give pleasure, and she has none of these things. She only knows them in the abstract, and she bases her judgement, as pathologists do, on the dents and scars and sediments of a soul long kept in formaldehyde.

Paula exists at the edge of emotional poverty: deserted by affection, deprived of physical contact... reduced, ultimately, to silence. She is a miserly, miserable creditor in the exchange of compassion.

She is too selfish. She is too cruel.

She is not in love with him. Nor he with her. Amid the grief-drenched hatching of two hearts, the question of love is irrelevant.

They will use each other; they will try to forget, try to escape, try to soothe the screaming loneliness at their cores, if for however brief a time.

And she finds in it, perversely, a certain grace, stanching the sense of isolation before it bleeds her numb.

An act of pure selfishness is, perhaps, a reliable panacea for creeping despair. Longing becomes their communion…

Paula's head briefly vanishes into the top of her tunic as she tries to pull the bottom up over her breasts. With her arms crossed over her head, her pelvic bones stretch her habit clear of the skin, revealing the deep curve of her waist, her startling whiteness.

Petros's eyes snap open, wide and terrified, and for a moment he looks unbearably vulnerable.

_"Christe eléison,"_ he breathes. The gust of air leaves his throat sounding suspiciously like he's just shy of choking on it. "Paula... please, I can't... I'm sorry, I can't..."

He releases her as though she has scalded his hands. He tries to speak, but cannot articulate the words, capable only of a strangulated wheeze that shocks him, angers him. She can sense his frustration, this sudden loss of the faculty of speech feeling, to him, bestial and low.

"I'm sorry," parrots Paula tightly. She closes her eyes, trying either to cover her shame or spare herself his. But all she sees in the darkness are vivid impressions of Petros's pale, pain-grim face, twisted in anguish and embarrassment, somehow far worse than the real thing. She shakes her head, resolving not to close her eyes again.

Excruciating self-consciousness throbs with cruel antiphony through her aching skull. A wave of remorse washes over her, the stale odor of it drying instantly on her skin like isopropyl.

"Forgive me."

With a sudden shiver, she brings herself back to reality, to find Petros staring at her from inches away –– vast blue-gray eyes fixed on her own.

"Forgive me," he says again. "Paula, I..."

He doesn't have to say the words; she already knows.

A line has been crossed that cannot be uncrossed –– a running leap over a chasm of ignorance and misunderstanding and into life's endless possibilities for pain and upset and ignominy that can no more be unlearned than one's first instinct to breath and blink.

Paula's eyes narrow against the indignity, her entire posture screaming in humiliation. With a sigh, she grows, once again, implacably calm –– resignation, understanding, and no small amount of shame descending to her center like sediment settling in a cistern.

"It is I who should be begging forgiveness. My behavior is inexcusable, indefensible." She has to swallow before she says, "Your vows..."

"And... other things." The graceless, blurted divulgence stains any solemn dressings of confession. His lashes fan across his cheek as he lowers his gaze. "In truth, I do not believe I am the kind of man who desires women, Sister Paula."

Paula knows him well enough by now to understand that he sees any entry into the morbid internal landscape as counterproductive –– unavailing unless turned towards the task of improving one's capabilities in battle. Anything that smacks of true emotional struggle he may well term _indulgent_ for the sake of avoiding, for as long as possible, any serious self-examination. To be alone with oneself in the space of silence is horrifying; she knows, with the utmost certainty of experience, that in an interval of introspection one is liable to hear the very things that one constantly uses the clamor to drown out.

Maybe this is why he finds it so difficult to face, or come to terms with, or admit, the innermost yearnings of his own heart. Because it involves the painful self-indulgence of turning inward, of recognizing in himself a sparring partner whose movements and gestures he cannot wholly anticipate.

Which makes it doubly ironic, and doubly cruel, that Paula has choreographed the motions of this most intimate confidence before he even knew of its existence himself...

"I..." Paula blinks. "I know. I have always known. Which makes my actions all the more monstrous. I'm sorry. I am so terribly sorry..."

"You have nothing to be sorry for."

She peers up at him, uncomprehendingly, dark eyes awash.

"Paula," he says, his voice brittle, "you have nothing to be sorry for."

_No._

Slowly, he walks across to her.

Softly, again: "You have nothing to be sorry for."

_No._

He raises his arms, hesitating for only a moment, then slowly rests his left hand on Paula's elbow and his right on her back before sliding it upwards to cradle her neck.

_I do._

She is momentarily stunned into silence, her heart beating in her throat and her stomach churning dangerously. She feels distinctly ill, her head spinning and her shoulders shivering. Both yearning and tentative, supplicatory and pathetic, the unfamiliar gesture startles her.

No one, not even him, has touched her in kindness in more than ten years.

"Paula..." he says, so quietly she can barely make out the words from under the gravel roughness of his voice. He moves closer, holding her shoulder, pulling her to his chest. Embracing her fully.

She feels him lower his cheek to the top of her head. Silent tears wet her scalp, and she registers, in an instant, the sublime pain that throbs inside of him as it does inside of her.

She rests her head against him, close enough to feel the expression on his cheeks, more solemn than she has ever known it.

The whole thing is shattering.

"What can I do, Paula? Please... name it..."

Perhaps it is not too much to expect his help, since he bears some responsibility for having awakened in her such a truly monstrous degree of longing.

Though for what, she cannot say.

In the clairvoyance of her despair she sees, in an instant, how her folly has already damaged both of them.

She was eleven years old –– a girl, an unwanted novice, a child of dead parents –– when she came to accept the fact that the direction of the future is entirely out of her hands, to be decided unalterably by chance, by fate or by God. Every life, every soul, fractures differently and she cannot discern the filigree of the cracks; she cannot trace them like lines across her palm. Now she is grown, or at least she thinks she is. But she hasn't yet learned from the algebra of grief. The weight of what has been lost is always heavier than what remains. In retrospect, the mortifying encounter seems inevitable. Perhaps it always was so –– perhaps they were impelled to meet and collide and enrapture one another. God's existence has its own order, a divine ineffability His creations can never hope to compass, their own limited consciousnesses themselves being but a fact among others. She thinks about this self-repeating pattern dispassionately, almost wonderingly: a fibonacci spiral precipitated from a primordial mathematics no mortal mind can countenance. Nautili shells and golden ratios.

She acknowledges, then, an odd affinity with those empty exoskeletons, the carapaces of calcium carbonate that sand and surf have thinned to mere wisps. The creatures they once housed –– whelk or scallops, cowries, limpets –– are long dissolved, their blood diluted by the tides, leaving behind a brittle shred of shell, pared so thin that it passes a faint pink light –– an essence, little more than a smooth condensation of the air.

The cruel, self-fulfilling pattern is all that remains.

She shakes her head slowly. "No."

"I... I'm sorry?"

"No more." She looks up at him, trying to figure out how exactly one contorts their face to look compassionate. She extends her hand, softly expectant. "That is not my name, Pietro," she says, and reaches out and rests her fingers on his hollow cheek for the space of a heartbeat, her touch lighter than the breath of wind cooling the heat of their bodies, winding through the confusion, the passion, the anger, the guilt... "Paula is not my name."

For a while there is a long, pregnant silence. At last Petros stirs, very quietly replying, "Forgive me. All these years..." His palms come up to cup the sides of her neck, and with a shaky sigh, he rests his forehead against hers, inviting again that strange, upsetting hurt even the smallest kindness always seems to beckon. "I never thought to ask."

"I would not have told you even if you had."

"And now?"

"Precious few testimonials are truly redemptive, Pietro."

"Perhaps not. But you are named for a man who was a violent persecutor before he became an apostle, a witness of Jesus Christ so brave that he was not afraid of suffering martyrdom." He sighs, reverent for the pain in the room, brushing the wound on her heart with the most delicate touch he can manage, but still feeling terrible for having to brush it at all. "In the end, the Saul who wanted to kill those who preached the Gospel gave his own life to proclaim it. I think that, at least, must count for something..."

What would her answer offer him? She knows he is only asking it to confirm his suspicions on the nature of her own hesitations, as if she hasn't made them perfectly clear already. She knows there is no more point in pretending, or in keeping everything to herself, but she guards the secret fiercely, reluctant to release it to him, mainly because she doesn't want to use it to gain anything from him. She has hidden it away for his own benefit as much as her own, but never with the intention of deceiving him into changing his mind about who she might or might not be.

What was it he said to her that first night, three years ago?

_Bemoaning one's misfortunes is selfish. _

She sighs, before coming to a decision, a judgement...

"Hanna..." she says softly. The second the words leave her mouth, spilling from between her teeth and burning her lips like hot oil, she regrets them. But she cannot take them back.

"My name was Hanna Svárovský."

His lips part, cheeks suddenly glowing a rosy pink –– she feels her heart stutter almost painfully as he stares at her in stupid, stunned silence, eyes glistening like the sea beneath a slate gray sky. The both of them hold their breath, her in awkward, unsure shyness, him in what she can only guess to be some manner of astonishment, perhaps awe.

She hates it with a bitter hostility that is almost past bearing.

_"Hanna."_ The name puddles into the silence like a question, uncertain in its cadence and pronunciation.

The sound of it on his tongue is so strange, so foreign, yet… so blessedly, blessedly kind.

So kind...

_Stop it. _

"_Da quando ci siamo conosciuti, non è mai passato nemmeno un giorno in cui averti come amica non mi abbia dato gioia."_

Oh God, she despairs.

_Make it stop._

The gentleness in his eyes promises no condemnation, and she cannot bear it.

A self-hatred bitter and malign paces in the shadows leashing her mind. Some invisible barrier still separates them, but the wall seems to crumble a little more every time the thing stalks along its length, testing its strength.

Her desire for him to in some way reawaken her stunted emotional faculties is not an entirely novel caprice. The dullness is itself a consequence of a malfunction not of her making: the internal bracing of her defenses catalyzed by the fear of vulnerability. Knowing he cannot give her what she wants, and balking at the prospect of ever asking, the best she can manage is a return to a wholesale shutdown of conscious awareness, a numbing of sensation to forestall against the possibility of the pain becoming so vast or unbearable that it overwhelms her capacity to function.

Her lips press together, feelings and thoughts threatening to boil over again in some equally unseemly, horrible way.

She has yearned, her entire life, for kindness, for love. And now that she has it, she hasn't the faintest idea what to do with it.

"Go."

He blinks at her in seeming bemusement. "Hanna, I––"

"Please... go. I..." she sighs. "I would like to be alone."

"I... is that wise?"

"He's gone, Pietro. You do not need to protect me anymore."

"That is not what I meant."

"I want some time to think. Please?"

He considers her words for a moment, his expression hardening resolutely, his jaw firm and his shoulders held in a posture that hints at coiled strength just beneath his skin. His hair is still down from where she tugged it loose, but as she watches, he pulls it back and ties it off again.

_He looks as though he is marching into battle._

"I promise you... should even the world stand against you, my lance will be at your side. And should it fail to protect you, let my own life be forfeit."

"... I never asked––"

"Don't," says Petros softly; he shakes his head gently, never breaking eye contact. "You needn't apologize, Sister Paula. You haven't done anything wrong." He smiles a little, and it dimly ignites his eyes in a way that tells her he is absolutely serious, without a trace of mockery or condescension. The expression is gentle and placid, and she thinks it suits his face infinitely better than any other expression she has ever seen before. _"E per qualunque cosa tu abbia bisogno, io ci sarò sempre, per te."_

_"Hai mantenuto quella promessa," _she murmurs.

She blows out a slow breath and sinks into the easy daze of letting time pass by unmarked.

He stops beside her on his way out, where he bends down, clears a strand of hair from her face, and kisses her gently on the cheek, the touch as soft and white as a magnolia petal.

The gesture whispers of a cleanliness and a compassion her mind cannot quite remember but her fear has never forgotten, filled as she is with the haunts and tragedies that make up the shadows of her life.

She can't endure it.

Paula waits fifteen minutes once he leaves; she counts the seconds off in her head.

Then she grabs her cloak...

* * *

Her destination is nine miles east of the Colosseum, past the Termini train station. She avoids the evening traffic and the Carabinieri patrols by directing the taxi along the ring road that wraps around the southern end of the city. She knows the location by the vague outlines of the dark, monolithic apartments –– the tors gesturing towards heaven like giant gravestones. A Rome of congested alleys and fetid shadows, a far remove from sprawling ruins and columned basilicas.

The dirty street is littered with rotting vegetables, rubbish, battered bins, offal –– from both pests and people. Listless eyes track her from the dark entrances of the tenements. Men and women stagger past her, muttering curses, hating to return to their hovels but having nowhere else to go.

The tors lance the gray clouds, and as Paula wanders nearer to them, the wails and gables and roofs of the tenements loom over her, like jaw mandibles poised to snap shut.

Every footstep crunches, entire flights of steps upholstered in broken glass and stained with spilled liquids and urine. The shadows of the street bob against the wall, the faint reflection of the moonlight undulating and ridged with ripples upon the screed. For a minute or two, Paula can make out nothing save the dark lumps of doors and shattered furniture and the mass of the occasional rubbish tip.

She says nothing on the journey. She pulls her cloak closer and retreats inside the deep hood, aware of the cold despite the exercise.

The alleyway widens into a large turnaround; the roads radiating from the dead-end street are slimed with mud and ordure, lined with low hovels, like teeth in a death's head. Bar lights glitter on the wet cobbles, and music wails out of the open doors, colliding with the more discordant, driving beats coming from the brothels. There are a few streetwalkers, but most of the prostitution is carried on in designated bordellos, behind closed doors, with a certain decadent élan. Hung from the windows, candles burn in blue, red and purple glass containers, and cigarette smoke writhes through the wavering light.

"You smell of death, _Signorina_," says a shadow from an adjacent alleyway.

Paula scans the newcomer, taking in every detail: the woman's high-heeled shoes are expensive but she wears no jewelry save a wristwatch on a metal strap and a thin gold chain at her throat. Her skirts dip between her thighs as she leans forward. She has a small, upturned nose and impossibly long lashes, her eyes the light beige color of unbleached linen. Her golden-brown hair spills from under the deep peak of her hood in a cascade of ringlets. Her face is lovely... and yet lonely in a way Paula doesn't understand.

"If you're looking to cause a stir, Inquisitor," says the prostitute quietly, "you ought to have brought the big _signor_ with you."

Paula removes her hood, its purpose rendered obsolete. "My business is my own."

"No, your business is me, and I want no trouble here. Go home, girl."

"I will not."

"You're not the first of the Church's hypocritical bitchhounds to come snooping around, and I doubt you'll be the last," the woman notes candidly, patently unconcerned and not a little bored. "What do you want?"

The desperate, unloved anguish –– it is hard even to think of the emotion in terms of description, let alone find the words to actually recount it –– is fitful and frightening in a dormancy that cannot be called docile, because docility implies some degree of control.

And Paula fears she is dangerously close to losing it.

She has opened a door she doesn't know how to close.

"Help me."

The other woman stands up straight –– far taller than Paula, emphasized in point of fact by her heels. She leans forward, looking the Inquisitor hard in the eye. She puts a finger under Paula's chin and brings her face forward, forcing her to peer up at her. In the way that one fixes on one small detail with perfect clarity, the mind concentrating upon it in an attempt to block out everything else, Paula sees that a fake lash, none too well affixed in the first place, has snagged on the woman's eyelid, each languid blink threatening to tear it away entirely.

_"Help me,"_ repeats the stranger, her words clipped, though her tone remains perfectly calm and reasonable, as though the request is the most natural thing in the world. _"Signorina,_ the only direction left to go in these parts is down."

"I..."

"From what heights of favor it is possible for a woman of God to fall, I wonder? To what depths of sin can she descend, even with all her alleged spiritual favor. The higher the pinnacle of blessing and authority she has attained by grace, the deeper and more staggering her collapse."

"I have attained no heights," murmurs Paula. Her silver hair falls in a heavy sheaf, hiding half her face. "I have received no favors. I have known no grace. Only one creature has ever touched me in kindness, and I will not sully his virtue with my weakness."

The woman's bearing bespeaks calm, while on her face rests the serene, near-imperceptible smile that one surmises rather than actually sees in the eyes of an eremite. "So you would sully mine."

"You are a fallen woman. Your virtue is already forfeit."

She laughs, the sound musical. "Am I meant to feel shame for relying on such sources of satisfaction? Do you imagine that I experience a loss of self-respect for indulging in activities contrary to your moral standards of conduct? I have nothing but love left to give, Inquisitor, while your Pope orders you to bless murder and declare war holy."

"You made your choices, and I made mine."

Even as the words leave her mouth, Paula recognizes the lie.

"Are not all our lives uncertain struggles between heaven and hell? The soul by its very nature is bound to eventually give in and prostitute itself to whichever of the two combatants has been more obstinate in its pursuit."

"When prior abuse has already left one vulnerable to being exploited further," Paula counters, "one opens oneself to being selfishly used by all others for their own pleasure and purpose, all under the guise of mercy."

"Ah... a dilemma you ought to know well by now, child."

Paula falters... her daring almost failing her.

The woman watches her, silent, still; through the scudding clouds, the moonlight shines down all around them, rendering the stranger cold and silvered, a creature of night and shadow.

"What is your name?"

"Does that matter?"

"No, not really. I already know who you are, Inquisitor... I know _what_ you are. I know to what depths of depravity and cruelty you have plumbed, what bloodlust drives you. I pride myself on knowing these things. Such a brute should underneath all her viciousness, her vileness, be a coward. But I am convinced that you are not. Because even cowardice requires a certain degree of sensitivity, and a certain value for life. And you have none, _Signorina della Morte._"

"If I have sinned against you," says Paula, "then I invite you to seek recompense."

"You would welcome that, I think. No: in dying all is revealed to us, but alive we see with mortal eyes, feel the pain of mortal flesh, and know the confusion of imperfect mortal understanding. Killing you would be a kindness, one you do not deserve." The woman's thumb grazes the edge of Paula's lower lip, teasing the full shape. Paula catches her breath as the calloused fingers slide across her jaw, nudging the angle upward, stroking the soft skin beneath her chin. "I cannot take confession nor offer absolution, child. Do you imagine this little act of indiscretion will make the bedrock atrocity of your sins somehow less abhorrent? All the suffering you've caused... don't you think you have a moral responsibility to suffer yourself?"

"I... I do... I _am_."

The woman looks around with a steady and somewhat piercing gaze, as though she sees straight through the alley walls and is taking in all the particulars of the city's squalor. Ingots of light shimmer in the woman's eyes, the way frozen dew bejewels a blade of grass.

"I see."

Money is exchanged –– a sum large enough to indulge a multitude of sins. In any case, there is no danger of the woman saying the right words to the wrong people, not if she wants to keep her career or, more likely, her life.

They are at an understanding.

The woman leads the nun into the bordello with a certain somber dignity –– none of the brash confidence Paula might have otherwise expected of a profession whose practitioners fuck with clear consciences and smiles on their faces.

The room is small, sparse, barely furnished –– a little table with a lamp, an armchair, a bed.

Paula balks at the sight of the bed.

"Are you happy?" asks the Inquisitor without judgement, not wanting to make any assumptions. She isn't entirely sure where the question comes from.

The woman considers the query quite seriously. "Happy... I do not know. But I am free and I am alive. There are those who resent not being seen, and I suppose that our invisibility, compounded by the thousands of people who pass us on the street every day without looking into our eyes, is indeed a symptom of something in the world, perhaps, being desperately unhappy." She pauses and studies her.

Never altering expression, the woman leans forward and presses her lips to the pale, thin line of Paula's mouth. Her tongue, dexterous and clever, works at the rigid contours until they hinge open.

Paula takes a deep breath; she does not exhale, holding the taste of mulling spices and cigarettes in her lungs.

The kiss is skilled, tender, and in every way well presented.

And it leaves Paula no less indifferent.

She despises herself, then, with a virulence that is almost past bearing. Not on account of her appetites... or lack of them. Nor for her part in bringing two people to her bed on the same night. The hatred stems, rather, from an inability to match their gentleness, their compassion, measure for measure... for the certainty that, in the end, both of them deserve far better, far kinder, than the likes of her...

It isn't sadness or self-pity –– she is wise to no feelings of desperation or disaster, nothing like depression with its glacially frigid realization of having been badly and untraceably misunderstood –– but rather a plain, artless form of loneliness; something uninteresting... a fleeting, unaccompanied thing, like a hailstone melted in midair, unguessed and unobserved by those weathering the storm.

The woman reaches out her other hand and moves Paula's lamentably silver hair away from her neck, stroking the chiseled lines of her throat. She shifts closer, so that her leg is pressed against the inside of Paula's thigh.

"Up to this point you have, by Divine intercession, received more grace from God than you deserve, Inquisitor." The woman's fingers slide lower, pushing aside the neckline of her cloak, drifting against the swell of Paula's breasts. Her knee rises and falls with gentle pressure, creating a steady friction against the junction of Paula's legs. "You carry this treasure in a very frail vessel."

"I... I am not frail."

"Hatred makes you weak where love makes you vulnerable." She kisses her eyelids. "There is a difference." The side of her mouth. "Hatred is your way of fighting for survival –– the easy, glib denial." The beating pulse at the base of her neck. "It is the weapon of a broken, beaten animal, and you will never grow out of using it."

She kisses her nose and her chin. She pecks at an earlobe, and then she covers her lips once more, lathing her mouth with a devastating thoroughness that has Paula damp and trembling in her arms.

The kisses move to her neck. Her breasts. Her stomach. Lower.

Paula finds her fingers twining in the other woman's golden-brown hair as her head moves between her thighs; the woman pulls stockings and underthings aside in her slow, downward slide, coming to rest as her lips tease either side of a delicate, salty strait, unnamed and long-neglected.

Paula closes her legs on impulse, grimacing in surprise and no small amount of revulsion, as the woman turns deliberately to nibble and lick at one pale inner thigh, then the other. Feasting on her. Wanting everything.

Paula's grip tightens, her body arching wordlessly, lost to shame, blinded by curious novelty and drunk with frantic desperation as she guides her confessor back... the Knight sighs brokenly as the woman fastens her mouth over her cunt, her tongue sure and strong. The ministrations wrench an astonished cry from her; the sensations holding her stiff and paralyzed for several excruciating seconds.

She is caught, suspended... falling head over heels tumbling through the lights the snow the fire behind her ragged eyes it lights and falling and it hurts it hurts to breathe and all she can hear and touch and smell and see is blood in the bricks in the streets in the river in her hair...

The moment is not black and still and silent, because blackness requires light with which to be a contrast, stillness needs some concept of motion from which one can be at rest, silence needs the hope that something yet exists to break it...

_Hanna..._

Her awareness of the world flowers inside her, tendrils of rational thought slowly spreading from her and interlinking, skeining out, binding sense to self...

_What is your name?_

Every movement and measure of the universe distills to pulses of slippery heat, riveted on that crucial place.

Then it all releases, the feeling and tension shattering exquisitely, and she is racked with hard, blissful shudders.

"My name is Paula."


	4. Autunno

Destroy everything they have. Do not spare them, but kill the men and the women, the infants and the babes, oxen and sheep, camels and donkeys... - Samuel 15:3

* * *

Pope Gregory XXX dies, suddenly, on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Rome grieves, wilted and gray beneath the downpour, an entire city dirtying its head with the ashes of mourning. The crowds gather to wail their despair at the death of the Vicar of Christ on Earth even as they applaud the passage of the dignitaries from San Pietro to the Basilica of Saint John in the Lateran, offering prayers that the Almighty's will would be done.

Ushered by the sweet, high voices of the _cantoretti_, looked down upon by Jesus and the Apostles, Sister Paula listens as Alfonso d'Este, Dean of the College of Cardinals, celebrates the Mass of Requiem. His sermon is beautiful, delivered with ease and authority. His words tend towards an appeal to diplomacy, urging a casting aside of personal considerations, whether of ambition, personal rivalry, or ill will, in order that the cardinal electors may choose the man best suited by temperament and skill to lead the Holy Mother Church.

Sauntering before this gathering of immensely powerful people, d'Este seems more than comfortable in his sacred role. He manages to do what many a reasonable person might well mark as impossible: he puts the Curia at ease, soothes the suspicions of the most watchful people in all of Christendom, those most likely to see conspiracy in even the most ordinary events, among which the death of a pope certainly cannot be ranked.

Perhaps it is because Alfonso dresses his ambition and paranoia as wisdom, and that of a hundred bureaucrats for whom the suffering of humanity is of no account when compared to their own imagined vision of God's justice, only Cardinal d'Este is able to communicate his consummate cleverness as a perfect, peerless annunciation of divine will.

It is warm in the Lateran Basilica. Nine enormous pillars run along the nave, alternated with arches, beneath which are tabernacle niches housing monumental sculptures of the twelve Apostles, the largest among them Saint Peter, Saint John Evangelist, and Saint Paul. Like the statues, the air scarcely moves. A drop of sweat creeps down Paula's back. Silent and still at the edge of the congregation, barely breathing beneath her ceremonial armor, she finds in d'Este's sermon, despite the heat, only the coldest of comforts; the words of grace, coming from a man who has plotted for decades to make the papacy the ultimate jewel in his earthly crown, ring hollow.

He is a liar... they all are. So paranoid, so fearful of death and the reckoning to follow that they are willing to spew the most despicable falsehoods in order to avoid it. Basting their own guilt and fear onto those they consign to the flames. Long has she suspected as much... but to see clearly what she has only groped towards in her own inchoate reasoning is to see a candle lit in darkness. A few sad old men might cling to their mitres and mumble their prayers, but they are a dying breed... dead like the Pope, in belief if not in body. Men like Emanuele d'Annunzio, like Alfonso d'Este, have transformed the Church into a stage act filled with posturing and pretense, a performance to distract the rabble while they go about their drinking and their bribing and their whoring out of sight.

As the ceremonies wear on into the late evening, Paula's attention wanders; beyond the edge of the Lateran Cloister, the two moons ride high, casting a braided ribbon of crimson and silver light across the Porta San Giovanni. Save for the faithful congregated in the Piazza San Pietro, Rome sleeps, so much as it ever does. In the narrow alleys and lanes rats are at work, gnawing and feasting, noses twitching, claws grasping, all in the shadow of the Curia –– though far more honest than the latter in their intentions. Paula lifts her gaze, catching sight of a certain tall, frowning figure poised rigid just right of Cardinal d'Este's elbow.

Francesco di Medici's sits well back in his chair throughout the proceedings, his face shadowed. His high brow is wrinkled, furrowed prodigiously, leaving his gray eyes mere slits. The lines around his mouth appear deeper than usual. For once, he looks his age, or close to it. Occasionally, his severe scowl twists into an expression inexplicably bleak. Paula does not fail to notice him exchanging several glances, no less loaded for their discretion, with his estimable sibling… the august Duchess of Milan. Even Cardinal Caterina Sforza, who is known to have a keen appreciation for the role appearances play in winning and keeping power, looks distinctly tense during the long Requiem Mass.

They are twin presences, seated on either side of Cardinal d'Este at the altar, their postures identical at a passing glance. But closer inspection betrays the differences in the wealth of their experiences, one stained with dignified bitterness and calm acceptance, almost passively callous, and the other _pungent_ with audacious confidence.

Recently elevated to the cardinalate like her brother, Her Eminence Sforza is –– also like her brother –– always plotting, which Paula understands and indeed, respects. But the nun might have esteemed the regal woman beyond professional deference if she were willing to bloody her hands more than occasionally. Sforza keeps her fine moral sense, like her pristine scarlet vestments and elaborately coiffed hair, impeccably clean. Francesco, by comparison, bereft of the delicately perfumed and gold-embroidered evenhandedness occasioned by those of Sforza's privileges, relishes the filth and mire of political scuffles. If everyone's down in the mud with him, then he's no dirtier than anyone else.

Francesco is a man of resentment and rage, subterfuge and secrets, keeping his own counsel to an extent she has rarely seen in another. Which makes his confiding in the likes of her all the more puzzling, and Paula can't help but feel... _emboldened_ by his trust, and acutely aware of an unexpected, uncomfortable affection for him because of it. Whether by her own desperate need for fellowship or perhaps by divine intervention acting through even so deeply flawed a man, she finds comfort and purpose in her loyalty to him.

Gregory's funeral is held six days later, followed immediately by the _novemdiales_ devotional, the traditional nine days of mourning.

The cardinal electors move into Santa Marta before attending a special morning mass in Saint Peter's Basilica.

The Conclave convenes, finally, in the Sistine Chapel, a place where the very building seeks to convey in words, music, marble, and methods the splendor of the divine –– where heaven comes to earth, grace penetrates matter, and every portrait is part of the cosmic story of salvation.

As the final formal prayers end, all those who will not remain within the Conclave exit. The sound of the heavy wooden doors slamming shut reverberates around the chamber, as does the clang of the chains securing them...

* * *

Paula peers out the window; that evening, no smoke issues from the tinpot chimney, and the little lattice windows of the Chapel gape forlorn.

Her companion unfolds his hands and speaks to her in a tone as aggrandizing as anything she has ever heard sermonized from the altar of the Sistine, bellowed beneath Michelangelo's Last Judgement with its images of smashed and tortured bodies: "It will be His Eminence Alfonso, surely."

"He who enters the conclave as pope, leaves it as a cardinal," Paula quotes quietly. "Nothing is certain."

The fifth consecutive day of the Conclave, she sits with Brother Petros in a private study in the Palazzo del Sant'Uffizio, bathed in pools of yellow light, books on their laps and spread across the tabletop, lost in study. Vast red rugs cover the floor; bookcases line two of the four walls. No doubt they might have looked like figures in a Rembrandt painting, if not for Petros's shock of blue hair and his thunderous scowl.

Paula endeavors to focus on the scratch of the nib pen against the textured paper, an abrasive dragging that lends her words an uncomfortable weight. Petros, however, has long given up on doing anything remotely productive, preferring instead to glare daggers in the general direction of the Sistine Chapel.

"Only Cardinal d'Este can gain the support of the two-thirds majority," he argues. "He's the Dean of the College, Minister of Papal Doctrine, and the secretary of the Conclave! He is the prime contender."

"If Papabili are discussed as candidates publicly, oftentimes the accounts of their popularity are based on rumors and sourced, if at all, from off-the-record reports of individual cardinals."

"You're saying I'm indulging here-say."

"I'm saying you ought to check your conjectures. Predictions are but guesses –– when they come true, they are hailed as prophetic; when they don't, we salvage the situation by calling them allegories at best… halfwitted speculations at worse."

"Oh, how very droll," he snaps, releasing a burning ball of air. "Who else is there, Paula?" he demands with vast impatience.

"_Sister_ Paula, if you don't mind." Petros blinks bemusedly, and she pretends not to notice. "And His Eminence Mariano del Tindaro is the current Secretary of State and Archivist of the Vatican Registry."

Petros grunts. "He has trodden on too many toes, I think. After he attempted to swing papal policy towards military support of Germanicus he fell out of favor with the Congregation of the Doctrine. The Common Lords criticize the Church for having spread her religion by the use of the sword; they ridicule the entire Papal State on the score of our own Inquisition. No..." he muses, "the College will not elect a jingoist, not if they wish to keep the secular states on a tight leash."

"Nevertheless, Cardinal del Tindaro would prove a politically shrewd pontiff. Besides, His Eminence d'Este himself isn't exactly what one might call a pacifist, with his recent calls for crusades against the Empire. You're a fully-fledged Knight now; surely you're not averse to military action?"

"Against _vampires_, Sister Paula. Against monsters and heretics and apostates. I have little interest in squabbling with human nations, while Germanicus seems to enjoy doing little else these days." He smacks a massive pile of parchment, criss-crossed in spiky Latin script, on the table, before prodding her: "You're the one who is working towards her doctorate in _Juris Canonici_. You know the field better than I. Who else is there?"

She considers. "His Eminence Louis Ferrer is a contender. As Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship he is Papabile. Although I suspect the majority of cardinal electors wish for a more conservative direction following the relatively liberal pontificate of Gregory XXX."

"If wishes were horses, beggars would ride..." Petros arches a thin eyebrow, suddenly looking altogether too shrewd for Paula's fancy. He casts her a glance that for a moment makes her wonder if he knows more about the field of cardinal electors than he is choosing to reveal. Petros has all the aptitude for subterfuge and statecraft as a travertine pillar, but his sudden hesitation to disclose his thoughts makes her uneasy.

"With whom have Sforza and di Medici pledged their support?"

Paula deigns to lift her head only long enough to meet his gaze incuriously for a moment, then looks away with an air of slight annoyance. "Why do you ask?"

"They curry not insignificant influence within the College," explains Petros –– trying, and failing abysmally –– to affect some nonchalance. A straight dealer to the point of unbearable bluntness, he wouldn't know delicate if it bit him in the arse. "Sforza's candidacy is a foregone conclusion, but Cardinal di Medici may well be able to muster the votes. He has long counted amongst his allies Camerlengo Barbarini... Centuries of sacred rituals are set in motion upon the death of a pope, and a vast majority of them are administered by the Cardinal Camerlengo––

"Barbarini is an obfuscating idiot. Francesco..." She catches Petros scowling at her easy familiarity, his face fixed in an expression that Paula might describe as petulant. "... _Cardinal di Medici_ has thrown his support behind the Most Reverend Farnese, I believe."

"Farnese... by his honorific, he's no cardinal."

"He's a bishop, from the Diocese of Montefiascone."

"A bishop... what in blazes is he doing on the shortlist of candidates? The College constitutes the sole electors of the pope, with the consent of minor clergy. _In nomine Domini_..."

"Bartolomeo Prignano was the Archbishop of Bari when he was unanimously elected pope by the papal conclave."

"Paula, _that was in the Fourteenth Century_, nearly two millennia ago!"

"Regardless, there have been exceptions to the papal bull, Brother Petros. Pope Urban VI is a precedent, albeit a rather distant one. Farnese may prove another."

Petros blinks, his faintly vexed expression giving the impression that he is having a difficult time juggling the strands of conversation. "In truth, I know the name though not the man. Farnese is old stock... the _famiglia_ has produced a number of cardinals and protonotaries over the years."

Petros would know: the Orsini's, too, are one of those old Roman dynasties which seem to breed ecclesiastical dignitaries like so many prize steers. Paula clears her throat and says forthrightly: "Livia Farnese was one of His Holiness's mistresses."

"Oh. So this bishop is also... illegitimate." He makes a small sound of understanding. "That would explain the support of Sforza and di Medici."

"Farnese is not counted among the Papabili," says Paula aridly. "He's considered by many to be an inviable candidate. There are those among the cardinalate who accuse Cardinal di Medici and Cardinal Sforza of throwing away their votes... out of spite."

"Spite? Because this Farnese fellow's not a cardinal himself? Or because all three of them are...?"

"The Pope's bastards?"

God forgive her, the poor man blushes crimson, then swiftly pales. "Yes... _that."_

"As it happens, the objections raised are more practical than nepotistic in nature, Brother Petros. The general consensus is the Duke and Duchess are throwing away their votes because this particular candidate, Alessandro Farnese, is a chronically ill eleven year old boy."

Petros does not answer at once. He sits back in his chair and stares at her, as though trying to discern some spiteful provocation in her words.

"... Forgive me, Sister Paula," he booms after a long pause, his studied smirk belying what is no doubt a frustrating confoundment. "I know you and comedy aren't oft on speaking terms, but your sense of humor still leaves much to be desired."

"If you're going to be flippant, I'd rather you remain silent."

His mouth snaps shut, scooting like an errant schoolboy to the very edge of his chair. Petros's nonplussed expression does not change, but high on his thin cheeks appears a faint flush; it's obvious that he still thinks she's taking the piss with him. "I trust we will hear something soon, whatever the case," he grumbles.

No longer interested in discussing the Conclave, Paula's line of sight drifts from the Sistine Chapel towards the east. From the top of the Esquilino, the city fills the seven slopes down to the Tiber. The centuriation grid of cobbled streets drags the eye towards the dark slit of the river just beyond the Holy City's borders. Only San Pietro breaks through the imbrex and tegula clutter, clutching at the sky. In the east, Monte Cavallo squats, a sudden bump in the horizon with the jumble of the Palazzo del Quirinale nestling close at its feet. Directly to the north of the Palazzo del Sant'Uffizio, a succession of cross-streets glows, as if each avenue holds its own dawn –– the tail lights, the coarse blaze of deserted office buildings, the lit storefronts, the orange fuzz of the street lanterns combine into a radiant gloaming that rests in an orange and silver heap over the Eternal City. Laid out below her, with the sun slipping away, it looks chaotic in a way she can't wholly articulate. There seems no inherent geometry to the city, no loci by which to navigate.

Paula tries not to see it as an ill portent apposite to the Conclave…

"You ought to have made your inquiries before the convention of the cardinal electors," she murmurs. "I am sure Cardinal di Medici would have been more than accommodating in answering your questions."

Petros grimaces. "In truth, I do not like Cardinal di Medici. I try to avoid his company if at all possible."

A divot appears between Paula's eyebrows. She decides, then, to keep her own counsel regarding her recent audience –– and her recent preoccupation –– with the man in question. "Would you care to elaborate? I wasn't aware you knew him all that well."

"His reputation, if one might call it that, precedes him. He was wearing an all-black cassock before he entered Conclave," recalls Petros sniffily. "No stole. No cape."

"Your point being? His Holiness has rejoined the Lord God in Heaven. Cardinal di Medici is in mourning, for both his Holy Father... and his decidedly mortal one."

"Yes... that's what I thought at first."

"At first."

"Before I reminded myself that the Cardinal is the type of man who mourns damaged reputations and lost opportunities, not human beings."

"I see." Paula again avoids his eye, navigating by sight alone the rooftops of the Vatican and lingering, finally, on the smokeless chimney above the Chapel. "I trust whatever censures you're about to voice do not predicate upon the circumstances of Cardinal di Medici's birth, Brother."

All at once, her counterpart's thoughtful moue retracts into something thin and pale, a scar-line of a frown. "Nothing of the sort."

She cannot bear the sincerity of his naivety. "Nevermind."

Another long silence descends. The two Inquisitors stare at the tabletop. The silence roils.

"Forgive me for being blunt..." Petros begins at last.

She goes very still. Just for a moment. Then she shakes her head deliberately.

"Let me assure you, Brother," says Paula with glacial calm, exhaling softly, "amidst the infinite gradations of human vice, you'll find bluntness in your case is a sin which ranks fairly low."

His gimleted blue eyes turn round, making her realize –– belatedly –– that her comment may well be taken as an insult.

"My apologies. You were saying?"

"Cardinal di Medici... he is one of the most powerful men of the Curia," explains Petros with a mixture of irritation and expectancy. "When he was elevated to the cardinalate by Pope Gregorio, God rest his soul, it was thought that his keen mind and his martial acumen could only be to the benefit of the Holy Mother Church."

"But?" she prompts.

He takes a deep breath. "But I think he's a threat to the entirety of Christendom."

He has obviously rehearsed this pugnacious little declaration for some time, but it is clear from his expression that, as he recites it, he realizes that it sounds less grudging and more downright insubordinate. His voice trails off into the embarrassed corners of the room.

Paula offers him a lofted eyebrow, pen pausing above the paper. "Well, then let us agree to disagree, Brother Petros."

His lips tighten and his eyes narrow. She can see him thinking furiously of how to frame his next question...

"Why is it you trust that man so much when others almost universally revile him?"

Others like you, she wonders. "I consider their disdain a positive judgement of his character," she says aloud.

"Sister Paula..." Just then, Petros sounds almost like a priest. Certainly, he has drawn from her a confession regarding her loyalty to di Medici that she never intended to disclose, least of all to him. "He's worse than del Tindaro... he's a warmonger of the first degree."

"Rather than compromise for the sake of appearances, he has been honest and has refused to make concessions for causes in which he does not believe. I find that a sign of honor, of justice."

Petros snorts uncouthly. "The fact the Cardinal uses justice as a stand-in for self-interest, ambition, and other such shortcomings of Christian charity does not oblige me to accept his character for what it is."

"If your intention is to stir me to indignation, Brother Petros," she says, "I haven't the faintest interest. You may nail your theses to another door."

He flinches.

Good.

"The Cardinal's aim is the glory of God," she declares.

Petros mutters: "I suspect he'd very happily settle for the glory of Francesco di Medici."

"You would not understand."

A pause. "Come again?"

"You would not understand, Petros." Her voice is dutiful and deliberately calm, but following his high note of dismissal, she strikes a tone that seems flat and deadly in its opposition –– as if the two sounds have mingled into an audible counterpoint around a filament of contempt. The gossamer thread thickens, then flattens, turning gray. "You can never understand."

"Surely... this degree of deference to him isn't truly warranted, is it? Unless," Petros fidgets, "well... unless he has propositioned you for––"

"Mind your tongue, Brother Petros." Patience wearing preciously thin, Paula says coolly, "Francesco di Medici is Undersecretary of Papal Doctrine. Moreover, if your suspicions prove true and Alfonso d'Este is elected Pontiff, then the Cardinal will be our direct superior. The results of the Conclave nonewithstanding, he is still the Duke of Florence. His station warrants enormous respect."

Soundly rebuked, Petros bows his head.

Paula goes on with acidic scorn: "While true that Francesco is not impressed with the pomp and ceremony of the aristocracy, or so he claims, one hopes that you will comport yourself with the courtesy due his office. A Knight in the service of the Minister of Doctrine should conduct himself with more gravity, as befits his superior's station if not his own."

Despite the reprimand, she knows it is the vein of contempt in her voice that truly stings.

Petros mutters: "I shall do my best not to embarrass you in front of him."

He runs fingers through his long hair, but the motion is slow, sad... anger gone, replaced by something heavier. He doesn't meet her eye, but something snags his gaze, and he stares, instead, out the window.

"Sister Paula... look."

The streets are unusually quiet, in no small measure due to the squadrons of troops brought in to patrol the city in light of the Conclave. The night is overcast and leaden, but it lacks a breeze, so that when the white smoke begins to rise from the Chapel's tinpot chimney, it hangs, like a pall, over the Holy City.

"_Habemus papam_," murmurs Brother Petros, rising to his feet.

He crosses himself, then strides from the study at pace, leaving his books and papers where they fall.

He does not look back.

* * *

Paula does not see him again for a long, long time.

* * *

She never learns why she alone remained behind in Rome... even after Petros was ordered to the front. When she raises the issue with Cardinal di Medici, he quite tidily changes the subject.

Paula soon decides not to waste her breath in asking. She contents herself, instead, with gleaning details from Francesco's daily reports.

A month after the ceasefire, Paula finds herself making a beeline through the grounds surrounding the Porta Pertusa and the tower of San Giovanni, taking one of the tracks that zigzags through the park.

The passageways are narrow and cool. The overlapping sounds of the tourists and penitents echo between the tall buildings, distorting so that she can no longer distinguish singular words and individual voices. The chaos of noise reminds her of nights spent patroling the borders of the Papal Enclave, when an argument between two drunkards escalates suddenly and irrationally until every tramp is airing his grievances with the world and it becomes impossible to find out what, exactly, started them off...

Paula comes to a tall oleander shrub beyond which extends a flagstoned walkway that borders the edge of the Vatican gardens. As she makes her way to an opening of the hedgerow, she hears a pair of feminine voices engaged in conversation. The voices are not loud. In fact, the strictly moderated volume of the conversation betrays that something secret - and therefore dangerous - is being discussed.

_"Erano inferiori di numero ma hanno sfondato le linee nemiche," _mutters Sister Judith, taking a drag of her perennial cigarette.

Sister Joanna shakes her head in response, keeping her voice low. _"No... no, ha fatto tutto da solo. Più che una guerra è stato un massacro!"_

_"Ha cambiato le sorti della battaglia..."_

_"Ti ho detto che ha ucciso i suoi uomini!"_

_"Danno collaterale... ha praticamente vinto la guerra per noi," _says Judith firmly._ "Quindi dobbiamo giudicarlo, o dobbiamo mettere tutto in secondo piano, perché cos'è che importa, alla fine?"_

_"É pericoloso, _Judith_. Non è il comandante. È un cavaliere della distruzione... un cinghiale, il Ruinante..."_

Paula hurries on before her fellow sisters grow wise to her presence. She plunges down a series of jagged steps that link the looping levels of the ancient Leonine Wall. The steps are built of slick stones, uneven, slippery with wet pine needles; Paula has to slow her pace to get down them without feeling like she is about to fall.

She has heard the rumors.

The Vatican army launched a two-pronged attack targeting the Hussites rebels holding the city of Brno. The Bohemian forces on the flanks were overrun by the Inquisition and subsequently trapped in the area around the Svitava and Svratka rivers, which were in turn heavily blockaded on the Vatican's authority. Heavy fighting continued for several months in and around Brno. While the air cover promised the Hussites never arrived, the Vatican's battalions had scant experience fighting in desnsely-populated cities, running street battles, or storming barricades. In the cold streets on the edge of Brno, the Church's men were easy prey to the rebel militias, who were experts in sabotage, raids, petty warfare, and hit-and-run tactics. On the converse, the Hussites lost many to strafer fire, or from the heavy shelling on the ground. A handful of the rebels were so unnerved by the screaming of bullets and shells and the wounded, so scared for their own selves, that they broke rank and fled the front. The failure cost the Hussites dearly, in men and power.

The Vatican's attrition tactics eventually drove the Hussite rebels, along with the entirety of the Duchy of Bohemia, to the brink of starvation. The day came when the only thing standing between the remaining Inquisition forces and the city was a heavily fortified stronghold held by the Hussites.

The reports of what happened next were not long for reaching Rome's ears. The Vatican bombardment at the front lines lasted eight days but did little damage to the Hussite's defenses, and the rebels were able to wait out the attack in relative safety.

But someone –– that someone being neither Cardinal di Medici in Rome, nor the regional commanders in Brno –– ordered an impenetrable curtain of shells to prevent an enemy counterattack. The creeping barrage swept the ground ahead of the Vatican's front lines, moving so quickly the salvo outpaced the the Inquisition army, leaving them without protection.

Hundreds of Vatican men killed... by the Church's own shells.

Only one soldier moved fast enough to outrun the bombardment.

And it was the same soldier, according to the regional commander, who ordered the barrage in the first place.

The man, allegedly, dashed across the open ground where, having out-distanced the rest of his soldiers, he single-handedly decimated the remaining Hussite forces before continuing to fight his way down the trenches towards Brno, armed with only a lance.

Accounts of the battle are legendary, now, and the lone soldier, a hero...

Paula steadies herself, her hands knuckling at her sides.

Off the path, the young trees muffle the sounds of the city, obscuring the sky until only the faintest hint of dark blue remains of the day. The ground is thick with the acid smell of moldering leaf litter, fallen over previous seasons.

The birdsong stops.

Paula registers the sudden silence, the fine hairs on her neck whispering of its importance, before she even realizes why...

She hears a muffled curse and a belly-deep groan.

Then she sees him... keening, bent almost double, blue hair hanging in his eyes. The side of his face is swollen and bruised, his left orbit hardly open at all.

She hears him vomiting.

He heaves yellow bile, adding to the sizable puddle already on the ground. He's covered in a sheen of sweat, crouched on all fours, like an animal. His fingernails scratch at the stone as his body convulses, his complexion a pale gray with red wounds the size of grapefruits, sunk in a mist of diffuse self-loathing.

His shame smells of sick. He sniffs, the sound thick with mucus, and she realizes he has been crying. His one working eye is puffy, shiny pink and irritated with wiped-away tears.

She feels her chest burn and tighten, a slow smolder like indigestion. Her breathing is suddenly shallow and painful and she wants to gasp but finds that she can't.

Paula does not want to see this.

A horror, a disgust, rises, black and choking, inside her chest. Outwardly, Paula's throat clamps, her eyes narrowing at the pitiable, plaintive vulnerability of the scene. The revulsion that rakes at the inside of her chest flares like a grease fire.

She steps backwards, towards the staircase. A twig snaps.

Brother Petros's head shoots up.

Agonizing seconds tick by. A frightened man. Heavy breathing. Pain. Terror.

His face is paper-white, his hands are clenched in horror. He glares helplessly at her. His shadowed eyes meet hers. They are the color of the winter river beneath the Kładka Ojca Bernatka –– the water far below Paula's feet when she looked down and imagined what it would be like to drown.

_Il Ruinante_.

"What do you want?" he snarls, swiping a hand across his mouth. His voice is a deep, angry rasp of sound that seems torn from his throat. He has ordinarily very little inclination to profanity, but he appears not to care on this occasion. "What the hell are you doing here?"

She can see a reflection of sunlight on his damp cheeks, the russet of late afternoon. She sees how pale he is, how sunken his face has grown, the deep, black rings under his eyes as if he hasn't slept, thin like he hasn't been eating, gray like he hasn't seen the sun in days…

He looks... _haunted_.

But he doesn't move. He simply stares, his face grim and anguished and angry, a small twitch in the corner of his eye.

He cannot abide the thought of those dead soldiers in Brno... dead because of him; he shies from it as he did from the slaughter of the vampire fledglings so long ago.

His misery is pitiful. Pathetic.

Paula shivers convulsively. "Get up."

He merely closes his eyes, disgusted. With her. With himself. "Leave me alone."

It is as though he has spoken to her in a language in whose cadences she had always been fluent but had never known until that moment: an almost savage leap of comprehension, the instantaneous, vicious release of meaning, the way his words shed their pretensions in a scalding flash of heat and light. The days have passed for her almost in a dream. As the seige dragged on, she waited, for _months_, for word of his slaughter, anticipated his martyrdom, even as she imagined their reunion again and again, played the possibilities out in her mind until she managed to wear a groove in her thoughts, so deep that even now, she struggles to peer over its edges.

The waiting... the uncertainty... has been a curse. Perhaps there is none crueler, an anticipation born of despair.

She registers a visceral repulsion for the battered and pathetic thing kneeling in front of her... disgusted by his weakness and his lack of resolution, his fragile arrogance, his frightened audacity, his refusal to see God's will through the simple miracle of his survival.

"No. Get up, damn you. _Stand up_."

A dusty thudding in her head makes her vision pulse like a heat mirage. She looks at her counterpart –– her cohort partner, her oldest friend –– _really_ looks at him, and she finds very little of the Pietro Orsini she has come to know over the last ten years. Where he was once relaxed, insolently confident and overloud, gloriously alive, the four months siege, the three armies dead by his hand, have mutilated his human form, flaying it, tearing it limb from limb until little save terror and trepidation, hunger and hatred, remain.

And yet, in some way, she knows those things have always belonged to the deepest essence of his being. All the snarling, savage, frightened pieces of himself all accumulated into one beast, a deranged creature born from everything he isn't supposed to do or feel. An entity made of hatred and resentment and all the longings he can never admit to anyone –– not even himself.

His blue eyes stare dull and pale, squinting as though following a faint point of light hovering at some unassailable distance, his shoulders slumped, his face despondent. She watches him tremble, not in rage or anger, but in grief.

She feels true contempt. For him, for his accursed kindness. She wants to take that mournful, agonized expression and push it through an offal grinder. Paula stabs a finger at his chest, and the touch burns her, but the Inquisitor doesn't shy away from it. She accepts the pain, like all pain.

"Do you think God cares about your self loathing, Brother Petros?" she demands quietly of him; at the startled, stupid expression on his face, she goes on: "Do you think the souls you have sent to Him, the men you have killed, care about whether or not you're on your knees, in the leaf litter, pitying yourself for having killed them? We are broken, pathetic little creatures in His eyes, and to think otherwise invites an irredeemable arrogance. It is selfish and wasteful. Cowardly. One day a collective reckoning will clamber down both our throats, and it will be a race to see which arrives first... absolution or death. Either way, I will not indulge your wallowing in guilt and grief... which is more decency than you ever allowed me, isn't it?"

Protestations, perhaps curses, crowd his mouth, but he speaks none of them. Nothing of the sharp delight she knows he took in brutally slaughtering the heretics in Brno, nor of the keen self-hatred for the desire to do it again, to harness that power and unleash it any way he chose. He cannot speak, either, of the wrenching sadness at his center, the pain that permeates him as he realizes that something in him has been irreparably broken.

For a long while, there is silence, the two Inquisitors simply staring and taking stock of their deep, bleeding wounds, the blights upon their souls.

Somehow, somewhere along the way, the violence and hatred and death has seeped into her blood, her idealism cooling and her heart ossifying. She is all rationality, all objectivity. Retribution and divine justice are like her moon blades: their weight and balance hardwired into her nerves and sinews. God's Law, like death, is not complicated, nor is it simple. It is routine –– a simple fact of reality. It is neither selfish by fashion nor segregating in nature.

And it is a profound consolation, perhaps the only one she has ever known, to a creature who has long looked for a meaning in her life, only to see in the eyes of her victims that her purpose lies in piety, and her benefit in blood.

And yet...

"I am not like you, Hanna," says Petros, his voice thick. He shuffles back from her, like a chessman going from square to square. "I cannot accept barbarity as a means by which to honor God's covenant." The truth comes quietly. It, unlike its speaker, does not feel the need to shout.

She feels poised in that exquisite instant between free fall and flight, staring into the vertiginous vault of open sky, and for a moment she can't breath. "Evil and suffering are real, Petros," she states. "This world is not good. It is not kind. We are fallen creatures living on a fallen star that has been twisted and corrupted by sin, and we all share in its brokenness. We share in its legacy of death."

The hatred, a blunt beating against her ribcage, sways to hopelessness. Then to pity. She touches upon the dull ache in her chest, slow and sluggish, and without righteous anger to lend her strength, without that strength becoming power leashed but no less lethal for its control, Paula just feels... sad. Tired. Terribly so.

"It isn't in the nature of the truly devout to hold onto bodies," she tells him. "All beings are momentarily animated, but ultimately impermanent, destined to return to the dust. The living are meant to die, Brother Petros. Accept that."

"The nature of the truly devout..." he repeats, whispering hoarsely with a degree of outrage she has heard many times before, but never directed at her. "Do you mean to question my faith?"

"I mean to question your strength. If it angers you so, prove me wrong. _Stand up._"

Petros glares up at her, furiously pushing his hair off his face.

A gentle breeze chills her through the heavy wool of her habit, whispering of the dark and beautiful things only the wind can tell.

Paula should hate him. She should fear him, but she doesn't, she wouldn't.

She can't.

"Coward."

* * *

Coboria, Paula recalls from her lessons in the seminary, are traditionally carved from white marble.

The huge columns of San Pietro's baldachin are made, instead, of bronze, twisted and decorated with laurel leaves and bees. The massive ciborium sits at the center of the nave, directly under the dome, penetrating visually from every direction, the space telescoping towards the Cathedra Petri, a perfect replica of the ancient Throne of Saint Peter. The chair sits on an elevated plinth overlooking the altar in the apse, lit by a central tinted window through which moonlight streams, illuminating the gilded glory of sunrays and clouds that filigree the wall. Lavishly decorated marble sculptures and stucco mosaics festoon the aisles, with two smaller chapels branching off from the central nave, the Chapel of the Sacrament and the Choir Chapel.

A small group stands clustered around the papal altar beneath the baldachin's canopy –– a tall man and a beautiful woman robed in cardinal scarlet...

And propped between them... a boy, donned in the purest white.

Approaching the baldachin, Paula finds her eyes lofting heavenward, head tilted towards the massive script girdling the interior of the dome:

_Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo Ecclesiam meam... Et tibi dabo claves regni caelorum..._

She thinks she's feels the ground shaking, as though the earth is aching under San Pietro's weight. After a moment, she realizes the basilica is still, and her legs are faintly trembling, overawed by the size and spectacle.

She grows wise to a near-inaudible murmur, rasping from the tall figure at her side.

In the relative quiet of the side aisles leading towards the heart of the basilica, she can hear Brother Petros praying.

Since returning from the war, private devotion has become the measure and rhythm of Petros's life. He has always been devout, fiercely committed to the gospels, but now Paula and the rest of the knights struggle to find a time when he _isn't_ praying. Or training. Or doing some variation of both. He makes time to pray before and after his meals, and intersperses his Breviary throughout the day and night. At four in the morning, at noon, and again at four in the evening, he stops whatever he is doing to pray the Angelus. He prays several Rosaries each day, goes to confession every week, and does not let a day pass without receiving Holy Communion. During Lent, he only eats one complete meal every night –– just enough to maintain his fighting strength –– and fasts without fail on the eve of Our Lady's feast days. Joanna once joked that it was mathematically impossible that _Il Ruinante_, as many have taken to calling him, should be able to sin sufficiently to keep up his schedule of confession and contrition.

Paula, at the time, failed to see the humor.

Petros seems so much colder now. Like winter sunlight falling on one of the Piazza San Pietro's marble statues, casting a long shadow behind. His once silky, neat head of hair is constantly greasy, plastered to his scalp from the weight of his helmet, which he rarely removes, even in the height of summer. Darkness haunts the grave blue of his eyes; his lips are pale from the pressure of being pressed together and his countenance is sallow despite the sun, his rawboned face as stiff as a jeweled saint's in a niche. His every word is saturated with bitter, spitting scorn, as though humanity's infinite capacity for violence, combined with his own, has worn him down only to resurrect him tempestuous and ill-tempered, leaving him liable to fly into a passion at even the most benign transgression.

More than anything, Brother Petros looks _angry_. All the time. Angry and hurt and terribly tired, his dreams black and his waking hours blacker, and any hopes he has of the future the blackest of all. Seeing sin in everything, most readily himself.

Despite the late hour, they are not alone in that vast and hallowed space. In addition to the several dozen men-at-arms who have escorted them from the palazzo, Pontifical guards are everywhere in evidence. Their arrival attracts some attention, but the sight of the black and crimson Inquisition livery discourages anyone who might have challenged them.

In approaching the papal altar, Paula can't help but consider the newest cohort accompanying Petros and herself, wondering, as she does so, where Francesco is managing to find these strange characters, and what his logic is in bringing them into the Inquisition's fold.

Both men trailing at Paula's heels are well past the novitiate age; neither one is a career churchman; in fact, neither one looks even remotely _healthy_.

The first –– a short, fat figure with bulging eyes and a misanthropic temperament, oscillating from quiet brooding to sudden explosions of sneering derision –– plods behind Brother Petros, wiping his sweaty palms on a cassock greasy with thumb marks and wine stains its last good wash hasn't entirely managed to conceal. The man is a mutant... one of those rare genetic deviants who are only slightly less likely to land themselves in the service of an ambitious Cardinal as they are to burn alive for heresy and witchcraft. He is, as Paula recalls from Sister Simone's dossier, capable of inflicting an enormous electrical charge, possessed of unusual abdominal organs made of electrocytes, lined up so a current of ions can flow through them and stacked so each one adds to a potential difference. A useful, if dangerous, mutation for a little fellow who wouldn't otherwise have a prayer in heaven of wielding a polearm or flattening his enemies with a punch.

But if the round, greasy novice is unpleasant on account of his obsequiousness - not to mention the tendency of his protruding eyes to never rise higher than Paula's chest - then the second novice is unpleasant for the simple fact that he is, Paula thinks, one of the most unnerving men she has ever encountered.

He is short, too, but thin where the first is fat, all dark angles and lean corners in both face and body. His appearance is striking rather than handsome: his nose crooked, his cheekbones a little too pronounced, his skin marked with acne scars, oily hair landing in choppy, uneven ends nearly level with his chin. His eyebrows, straight and interrogative, sit above impenetrable black eyes, pinched in a squint. He is a former soldier, a mercenary: one may think that several years of thoughtless and casual bloodshed –– both in and outside the auspices of the Vatican's sanction –– might lend the man the cadaverous demeanor of a ruthless killer. But what disquiets Paula so thoroughly is the fact that, entirely counter to her expectations, the second novice presents the aspect of a tidy and impeccably polite young man. He is soft-spoken and well-mannered. He smiles almost unceasingly. He is civil and urbane in precise, absolute detail.

Perfectly calculated.

Paula's lips twist in excruciating distaste, not terribly rude or flagrant, but conspicuous enough to draw notice.

"I beg your pardon, but is something the matter, Sister?" asks the second novice. His voice is the same as the rest of him: thin and oily.

The question falls into the vaulted room like a drop of water into a pool, spreading outward in silent ripples.

"No, Brother Matthaios," she assures the young man. "My apologies… my mind was elsewhere."

"No apology is necessary, Sister. I pray for your deliverance from whatever troubles you."

While civil, the assurance from one Brother Matthaios makes her stomach squirm. The man hails from Tétouan in Hispanic Morocco; he once made a name for himself killing his own people –– and the people of other nations –– for a paycheck. To act for starvation wages in lieu of morals or conscience is liable to make anyone dangerous.

Matthaios is not a man she cares to cross.

"Tell me, Paula," chortles the round novice, unable to entirely mask the goatish little sweep of his eyes, from Paula's thighs to chest, "are you nervous to meet the new Pope?"

"That's Sister Paula to you." She looks right down her nose at the man. "I'd advise you to remember that in the future, Brother Philippos."

His round, bulging eyes narrow in irritation. "I can't imagine why you'd be nervous," he grumbles.

She glances over at Petros, and sees from his thunderous expression that he, too, is rankling at Philippos's coarse little observation.

Philippos, meanwhile, appears to have no hesitation in speaking freely before his fellows: "Evidently he's just some pimply-chinned little brat."

"You'd do well to cease such blasphemous talk of the Holy Father," growls Petros, eyes flashing. He has a livid tension running through him, like a lick of fire on molten iron. "And kindly keep your tongue off Sister Paula, for that matter."

Philippos rubs his overlarge hands together, cackling obscenely. His mouth is plastered wide in a grin, eyes rolling to show the white. "Easier said than done, Brother," he simpers, knowing full well he'll get a rise out of Petros, "our dear Sister beckons a taste..."

Brother Petros spits a slew of venial curses in incandescent Italian Paula would never dream of repeating in polite company. Philippos's comment elicits such fury she finds herself having to rest a restraining hand on Petros's arm… lest the eel-like novice find himself drinking his meals through a straw for the next five months.

She can see Petros forcing himself to remain calm, pressing his fingernails into the palms of his hand and taking deep drags of air.

"Brother Philippos," says Paula with glacial softness, "to atone for your disrespect, for the next fortnight, you will fast from matins to evensong."

The smirk slides off his face like water off windowglass. "What...!" he squawks.

"And flagellate twice nightly with knotted cord."

"You can't-!"

"Thrice nightly. And let us extend the fortnight to the full month."

"Sister Paula, let us be reasonable..."

"And don a hairshirt beneath your uniform. Brother Petros, I would beg your valuable time in administering our Brother Priest's penance?"

"With pleasure, Sister Paula," snarls Petros, blue eyes flashing, ablaze with contempt.

Philippos continues to splutter, but evidently intuiting the risk of incurring further punishment, elects to hold his tongue. He swears intelligibly under his breath, which is irritating in the extreme, but Matthaios merely chuckles, which is almost worse.

"Let God's will be done. And Brother Philippos?" Paula's every word seeps poison. "Speak to me in such a manner again and I shall have your wrists suspended by a rope from the ramparts of the Castel Sant'Angelo and weights hung from your grotesque, bloated body until your shoulders dislocate. Am I quite understood?"

She takes his quaking silence as acquiescence. She does not expect she will have trouble from him again...

The matter settled to her satisfaction - and Petros's, judging by his restrained glower - the four inquisitors approach the Papal Throne to face the Holy Father and his _consiglieri_: a prince, and princess, of the Holy Mother Church. The latter, the Duchess of Milan, seems incapable of mirth. Her expression is entirely without affection or warmth, analytical behind her monocle. The former, the Duke of Florence, looks characteristically confident and arrogant.

The young Pope, by comparison, just seems... _exhausted_.

Paula looks at the Holy Father's blessed face, the first time she has had a proper chance to do so. It is almost too open, too innocent: heart-shaped and freckled, framed with silver‐blonde hair, sprouting in every direction from under his papal tiara and curling to cup the curve of his chin. Paula knew since the Conclave that he was young, but this boy is also _tiny_... small and slight, stricken with the off-color pallor of someone chronically ill or undernourished. He seems troubled, heavily burdened, no doubt fatigued by the briefings from his older half siblings, and from being forced to endure the impassioned arguments and counsel of his Curia staff.

The boy yawns, slack-lidded, and seems on the verge of nodding off, slumping on the Throne of Saint Peter like a somnambulist. He squeezes his eyes shut and begins silently to do what some might call praying... to Sister Paula, it looks more like begging.

A little embarrassed for the boy's sake, Paula's gaze brushes against Cardinal Sforza, who appears not the least bit intent on favoring any of the inquisitors with the great honor of her prolonged attention, least of all a short, skinny, sour creature like Sister Paula. The Knight is struck again, as she has been many times over the past ten years, by the woman's incredible beauty, the symmetry of her face, framed by sumptuous golden hair, her expression as luminous as the smoked gold of her monocle. Paula imagines herself as Cardinal Sforza must see her: face grim and pale and burnished with a thin sheen of nervous sweat, hair falling in a heavy silver sheaf that lends her a furtive, surreptitious appearance, framed by ill-defined, uneasy shadows. There is fraying at the hem of her habit, and her corset is dull with age and held in place with old red cord in place of proper lacing.

However, Cardinal Sforza seems as unconcerned by Sister Paula's pauperized appearance as she appears unaware of her own poise and physical beauty. But the Minister of Foreign Affairs is a dignified, opportunistic woman, intelligent and cunning, observant and self-centered, stone-hearted and willfully cold, and Paula suspects the cause of her equanimity is less humility and more patent disinterest.

Francesco, in marked contrast, pays Paula a degree of attention that seems to fall beyond the merely formal. His stare is keen and quick, like removing the peel of an orange in strips with a paring knife, pushing down from the top to bottom in efficient, curved strokes. Nicking off the white flesh. Cupping the cool, wet, skinless fruit in his hand. She can imagine, with the peel removed, that he can see straight through her face and its carefully controlled expression, into the inner processes of her mind. Indeed, at this and other times, she swears she can feel the individual nerves in her head being touched, as if he is searching for something. A solution, a line of proof, perhaps, in a book full of strange theorems. It is disturbing, and yet spellbinding in a way she doesn't entirely understand.

"Holiness," announces Cardinal di Medici with teeth-jarring force, finally, _finally_ shifting his attention away from Paula, "this is Brother Petros, the soldier who ensured the victory of the Holy Mother Church over the rebels in the Duchy of Bohemia. Accompanying him are Sister Paula, our most accomplished academician and our most skilled fighter, as well as the newest class of novices..."

Brother Philippos and Brother Matthaios bow at her back. After a momentary pause, Brother Petros and Sister Paula follow suit.

"We are truly blessed to be granted the privilege of an audience with His Holiness!" thunders Brother Petros at their head, his voice echoing, metallic and cold, around the crossing of San Pietro. Paula has seen other men feign worshipful welcome, trying to part the subject of their flattery from some favor or fortune, but Petros is too uncompromisingly forthright to be anything but sincere.

As the reverberations peter out, there is a brief silence, and Paula finds herself struck by the puzzled, almost grief-stricken expression that crosses Brother Petros's face when the tiny white figure makes no immediate reply. It might have been affront on any other man, insult from spurned pride, but Petros's dismay seems genuine.

His Holiness releases a startled hiccup in lieu of a breath and stares at Petros, transfixed. It is almost as if he has been physically trapped in some clear, fast-setting resin, like an insect cast in amber. The effect is so alarming that Paula wonders, mildly concerned for a moment, if the boy is having a seizure. His enormous eyes –– the largest, roundest eyes she has ever seen, like those of a waxwork –– are the rain-limned gray of an autumn sky.

"Oh... _blue_," he murmurs, barely more than a whisper. The difference in pitch between his voice and that of Brother Petros could not have been more marked if they were born separate species. "Your hair... it's so b-b-blue..."

In an instant, Francesco's face flushes to match the color as his robes. The look in his silver eyes scalds, like being doused in boiling water. He draws himself up to his full height –– dwarfing the Holy Father to a comical degree –– and Paula braces herself for what she anticipates to be the scolding of a lifetime. Indeed, she has never seen her partner look so mortified.

"I beg your pardon, Holiness!" proclaims Petros, panicked, his voice cracking as it hasn't done since he was thirteen, "I will cut it immediately––!"

"N-no! I... I'm sorry. I didn't..." The child, as pale and delicate as a porcelain cup, squirms on the Throne of Saint Peter. He lifts his head to peer in Petros's direction, his face, bathed in candlelight, stippled with color like a stained glass saint. "I... I think it's... p-pretty... l-l-like the lake..." The boy trembles like an aspen against the wind as he musters what little presence he has, speaking at a murmur, but with an unbearably affecting bravery: "H-have you ever s-s-seen... Lago.. Lago d-d-di B-bolsena?"

"I..." Brother Petros blinks, flustered. He colors clear to the roots of his offending hair, overwhelmed by the attention, although the effect is mitigated somewhat by the fact the Vicar of Christ is blushing even more fiercely. "... Yes. Indeed I have, Holy Father! I was born not far from Montefiascone!"

"Y-yes. I..." The Pope, all of twelve years old, is so red in the face his blonde hair looks almost white. "There is..." he swallows, clenching his tiny gloved hand around his ferula, "there is... a t-terrace b-b-behind the B-basilica of Santa Margherita where you can... you c-can see the lake and all of... Viterbo... I... I m-miss it, s-s-sometimes..."

Petros smiles with candid warmth. "Then we must ensure His Holiness has the chance to visit his home in the near future!"

"I... I w-would like that... I would l-like that v-v-very much..."

It is unusual. Unexpected. Unprecedented. She can sense Matthaios and Philippos exchanging glances behind her, and even Cardinal Sforza arches a slender eyebrow in mild surprise; for her, it carries all the weight of a shout.

Paula glances sidelong at Petros; his focus singularly honed on the Holy Father, he is oblivious to her scrutiny. The muscles of his face flutter on the flighty side of bemusement –– so nervous, she marvels, before so tiny a figure –– but transcending the fear, or at least creeping around its edges, Paula sees such joy in Petros's fierce blue eyes, wide and guileless, his jaw a little slack. Confused, overawed, perhaps a little frightened... and more like his old self than she has seen in months.

For the first time in years, Paula's thoughts return to that brief, bright, disgraceful, divine night when she thought, if for however short-lived a time, that Petros might be able to absolve her of the crushing weight of loneliness and despair that dogged her since she was a child. Since that night, and what weakness was to follow, Paula has come to accept that she will never live to love another; she has resigned herself to it. Accordingly, seeing the warmth in Brother Petros's eyes at being so addressed by the Vicar of Christ causes no comforting remembrance. If anything, it reinforces for Paula the knowledge that she has lived a hollow life, where a duty to God and the Church and the exchange economy of pain and penitence suffocate any chance at real human contact. An existence dimly shaded away, the colors of her emotions flat, an ingot of lead-gray light beside which blazes a bonfire.

She knows, then, that Pietro loves this boy. Fiercely. Profoundly. Without reservation or remorse. Loves him with as powerful a devotion as a father loves his son. Loves him with the same imperfect, earnest, _true _love the first Bishop of Rome harbored for his Savior.

_You are Peter, and on this rock you will build My church..._

And his love for this child is a truer benediction, vouchsafing a surer grace, than any trappings of ecclesiastical investiture.

Paula looks up, into the deep shadows that hang beneath the dome of the basilica, the places the candlelight cannot penetrate. The air hangs without motion beneath the corbeled ceiling high above.

She sees nothing of the glory of God in the grand architecture of San Pietro, the seat of power and eminence at the heart of the human world. In the light cast back upon the throne by the candlelight, it becomes all at once clear that it is not this tiny, sickly boy Pope that is laughable, but those emblems of earthly authority whose travesties have been draped over his shoulders and pressed into his scalp. She sees with perfect poignancy the vanity of empires and kingdoms, and the absurdity of men who promote themselves with preposterous titles and thereby claim license to rule over others. By comparison, the white-faced, freckle-cheeked figure propped on the Throne of Saint Peter seems only to grow in dignity.

It is tempting, in that moment, to describe this vision of reality as –– for want of a better alternative –– a revelation: a flash of comprehension, to find the nobility and mystery and beauty of God's grace in such a perfectly common nature, the indwelling of the divine image in such an ordinary soul...

The revelation passes, quiet and unobtrusive, even as something snags in the corner of Paula's eye.

She does not know what Cardinal di Medici takes from the exchange between Brother Petros and His Holiness Pope Alessandro XVIII, but the muscles of his face have tightened gravely. She is keenly aware of every shifting expression: Francesco's gaze touches her for a split second before dispersing into the air like a drop of water evaporating on a hot stove. His usual cool, calculated mask blinks back into place half a heartbeat later, but the agony in that one split-second glance sends a ribbon of ice crawling down her spine.

Paula registers a great swell of pity.

She knows she has lost Brother Petros to this boy.

She wonders, then, if perhaps Francesco has lost something, or someone, too...

* * *

The sun slides reluctantly below the horizon, leaving trails of vermilion across the darkening sky. The evening seems to beat with a single pulse, its own strange rhythm, streaming through the air like sunlight between the boughs of the stone pines.

Francesco sits behind a vast expanse of polished chestnut and marble, his back to an ample grate, his pen scratching rapidly across the top ream of a sizable pile of paperwork, his cold-numbed lips twisted in a ferocious glare.

He glances up inquiringly and, seeing Paula, grits his teeth. He snatches for a snifter of... something, near his left hand. He downs the contents in one swallow. His high collar is open at the throat, the slice of skin tanned and dusted with fine blond hair. His features are the same, austere and still, but his chin is unshaven. The careful visage of nobility and prestige has disintegrated into a more honest image –– that of a master of subterfuge and deceit.

Paula supposes she shouldn't be at all surprised by her superior's anger.

The Pope has picked a new Director of the Inquisition.

The glass in Francesco's hand hovers for a moment in front of his open mouth, then he blinks suddenly and puts it down, empty. The light from the heavy chandelier reflects off the cut facets of the lead crystal and makes the dregs glow as though lit from within. His eyes reflect the fire.

"I am sorry, Paula." Caught off-guard by the sincere and vehement contrition in his statement, Paula finds herself suddenly disarmed. In the following silence, Francesco speaks quietly again, adding: "Truly, truly sorry."

He stands, grimacing, resting his arm along the mantelpiece. The Cardinal clenches and unclenches his hands as he speaks. His expression is hardened, almost brutal –– a face that might have been chiseled by a sculptor who fell out of love with the idea of beauty. The dusk glistens on a drop of sweat as it falls from his brow to his knee.

He owes the greater apology, but at the same time she knows that what is done is done, that no matter what he says now, it is beyond even his power to make it right.

"If His Holiness wills it, Eminence," she says quietly, "then I will obey."

Francesco's mouth twists up on one side, as if he is biting the muscle of his lip. "This was not meant to happen."

She listens for a little while longer, expecting him to say more, but the silence grows so deep and clear that she finds herself straining to hear his every thought in lieu of his words, tracing ripples radiating outward like placid water scattered by a skipping pebble.

She watches the stone sink... learns little, understands far less.

Francesco, she knows, is a man who studies people. He understands better than any man the utter greed and venality that drives the dignitaries of the Holy Mother Church. He knows them all, each and every one, probably better than they know themselves. Decades of diligent, devoted effort have prepared him perfectly for the moment when he, alone among all the rest, would learn their weaknesses in order to cultivate a means of advancing his station and, perhaps more principally, of protecting himself. Because, for all his cold brilliance, there is no part of him that is not, in some ways, wounded... that has not healed cater-cornered, no part of him not crueler and crookeder for having been broken.

The somber dignity of Paula's expression never falters even as she entertains such thoughts.

"We define what we desire, Eminence, while others define what we deserve. There can be, at times, a huge difference between the two."

Only she can get away with sermonizing to him; she knows his anger, when it comes, is not directed at her. "The boy chooses now of all times to be obstinate," he growls. She can see his shoulders heaving with barely-suppressed emotion, fixing the wall with a look that could wither fruit on the vine. To hear a cardinal speak so poisonously of the young Pope is unsettling, even for her. "Why the hell wasn't he frightened of him...?"

"Eminence?"

"Alessandro can't abide loud noises... shouting. He cowers if the cooks so much as call for more tablesalt! Meanwhile Brother Petros bellows at volumes to bring the dome of Saint Peter crashing down upon our heads, and yet..." Francesco grunts to himself, "the boy sidles up to that lumbering oaf like a lamb to a maremma."

Paula forces herself to take a single step forward. The second is a little less difficult, and the third, almost easy. "There were never any guarantees, Your Grace."

"Excessive pride is a familiar sin," he opines, "I ought to know. But a soul may just easily as frustrate the will of God through excessive humility. Your willingness to subordinate yourself –– to roll over and _accept_ this –– does not become you, Sister Paula."

"I do not seek glory on either side of Heaven. I am a simple soldier."

"You are a Knight of the Vatican. There is little that is simple in your station. You are owed more than this."

_Owe_ is such a strange word, throwing out both blame and accolades with equal mercilessness. It is, she thinks, merely society's skewed scale for assigning a value to human beings... just another means of pretending that the ineffability of God's plan makes sense to those creatures who are, perhaps, the least intuitive of His creations.

Or maybe it's a reckoning of another kind, and one that becomes a possibility only through the arrogance and certainty that so easily accompanies Francesco's well-planned, though not always well-tended, life. He has made the mistake of granting himself the illusion that the future resides not in chance or circumstance, but in opportunities expressed as a sum of actions measured and counted, an anticipation of one day catching up to his high ambitions.

And for all his scheming, for all his stratagems... the boy Pope has other ideas...

Time passes, immeasurable, Paula standing at one remove. She sympathizes with Francesco's anguish if not his frustration, his uncertainty in light of the new Pope's unprecedented show of doggedness as he waits, vainly, for someone –– _her_ –– to offer a suitable explanation for this miscalculation. She can't help but wonder if the severe and at times almost condemning glances with which he appraises her are in reality a series of quick but intense meditations on his own helplessness. The Cardinal's face is rarely so transparent. His stubborn scowl melts into indecision, giving serious consideration to the possibility of countermanding the Holy Father's decree.

He is tempted. But something holds him back.

The fear of unknown consequences? He doesn't seem to have the answers any more.

She almost feels sorry for him.

"I once asked you to place your loyalty in me, Sister Paula."

"And I did," she affirms. There is no lie in her words. "I still do."

"Even though I gave you false hope."

"You made me aware of your intentions. But you promised nothing."

"Trust is earned, respect is given, and loyalty is demonstrated. Betrayal of any one of those is to lose all three."

"Promises may make a liar a liar yet again, having lied about the promise as well," she counters firmly. It is not the most politic argument. Not remotely so. "If you are harboring doubts regarding my allegiance, Your Grace, please know that titles and conventional rewards mean nothing to me. I am not one to feign loyalty to pay better dividends."

His silver eyes flash scorn at her. "It's a minor miracle that you've managed to survive for this long. It truly is."

"I do not covet prestige as you do."

"Not prestige, Paula. _Power_. There is a difference. You would do well to learn it."

The condescending remark cuts deep. She frowns intently for a moment. "I am not Petros, Francesco."

"That's entirely my point!" he snarls, his simmering fury coming to a sudden boil. "You're not some gullible, blundering simpleton! That His Holiness would risk the Inquisition –– risk my plans and our lives –– for that unruly, feckless, dissolute, useless fool... when you're more careful, more capable... vastly more intelligent...!"

"Yes, I am. And as such, I'd thank you not to patronize me."

His nostrils flare impressively. "Have a care, Inquisitor."

"Brother Petros is a good man... and a fine soldier."

"The only reason... the only _sodding_ reason the lay members voted in favor of approving his appointment _at all_ was because half of them are already tripping over themselves trying to curry favor with his family!"

In an instant, the Cardinal's snarling vehemence reveals three things to Paula, each made possible by its predecessor: the first that Francesco di Medici, unlike most everyone else, has no qualms about crossing the Orsini _famiglia_; the second that he has so misjudged Petros's motivations and character that his hatred of Paula's partner registers as more spiteful than damning.

The third... that a part of Francesco is, remarkably, _jealous_.

That he believes Paula's energies might be better utilized elsewhere, her loyalties and devotion bestowed generously on another.

Or... perhaps... he is attracted to Paula in a way that is not necessarily _comme il faut_ in nature, and resents her closeness to the man she has known for the last ten years of her life.

She wonders, vaguely, if Francesco, given the chance, would have her, here in his inner sanctum; she wonders if he's ever mulled it over in the small, quiet hours before dawn. She wonders if her name has passed between him and his father confessor.

It is not, she admits to herself, a purely passive or abstract rumination. It has taken her a good deal of time to believe she is worth all the pride and expectation Francesco lavishes upon her.

To have it stolen away unjustly is that much more cruel.

And yet, Paula cannot help but consider how she might use this newfound knowledge to her advantage...

A wiser man would have sent her away. Left the matter for another day. Thought twice and again before pressing the issue and rousing himself to further passions.

But Francesco is bitter and biting and angry, and not, she suspects, entirely sober.

"Orsini is not a leader or strategist! He's a nobleman's brat!"

"So are you."

She takes a step forward, glaring glacially at Francesco. He blinks in surprise at the outburst. Paula finds herself exhaling in exasperation, before looking around his enormous office. A searing red hearth casts expressionist shadows around the room. Francesco stands against a wall of floor-to-ceiling shelves, their generous lengths festooned with books. Many are handwritten manuscripts, some a millennia or more old. His office overlooks San Pietro Square. Priceless tapestries line the walls. Likely the liquor in the bottle is worth more dinars than Paula will see in several dozen lifetimes.

Opulence.

What would _he_ know of true hardship...

Not his mother... not his family...

_Him._

When was the last time he stood shivering in the cold rain, listening to a newly-imprisoned heretic cough with a sickness that would eventually kill him? Had he ever been so hungry, forced to starve himself during Lent, that he wished he had the courage to knife one of the priests administering the Sacrament and rob him of his crust of bread? Had he ever cowered before his superiors as they beat him to within an inch of his life?

When, she wonders, is the last time Francesco di Medici was forced to lay awake night after night for weeks on end, until exhaustion or illness claimed him, terrified that one of the most powerful men in his own Church would try to rape him...

"Brother Petros is now the Bureau Director, Eminence," she says, her tone only vaguely contrite. "It is the wish of the Holy Father."

"Alessandro is not the Minister of Doctrine!" he hisses. His face is crimson, the same color as his robes; he slams his hand down on the desk with such force the decanter and glass both leap an inch in the air. Paula doesn't so much as flinch. _"I am."_

"That's well as may be," her speech is slow in coming, but deliberate, "but you are not the Pope, Cardinal di Medici."

_You will never be the Pope_, she does not say, but the meaning is communicated no less effectively for its absence.

He goes resolutely still, immutable, poised for a forward movement she knows she is not equipped to handle. Paula registers the swoop of nausea in her stomach, grimaces inwardly at the acidic taste of bile in her throat; she feels the repercussions of her words growing invisibly around her, stratifying into some amorphous shape, like putting fingers to wet kaolin spinning on a wheel, the clay hardening impossibly quickly. Harder than concrete, leaving her stuck with what she shapes.

Francesco rests his fists on the top of his desk. She can see his knuckles showing pale under tight skin. He leans forward until he is so close that she can feel the heat pouring off him, see the great swathe of his broad shoulders blocking out the light. A glint of gold from the enormous cross dangling against his chest catches her gaze.

"I," the Cardinal snarls, "have _nothing_."

The admission –– a momentous display of frustration and helplessness –– costs his pride dearly.

Paula takes a breath against the tightness of her corset, looking away from the cross, away from Francesco, out through the open window towards the Piazza.

Emanuele, Alfonso, Petros, Francesco... they are all the same.

Vindictive, angry, frightened men. Unhappy little boys.

"You have everything, Francesco. You have more than most people ever dream of."

Paula senses his emotions accelerating, the wheel spinning its wet clay faster, rendering permanent the ugly abrasions and indentations left by her fingers.

"Enlighten me. What do I have?"

Paula peers at her hands. They don't seem to belong to her body anymore. Even her serene expression feels false, a mask that stares incessantly, emotionlessly, despite the absence of any face behind it.

They are distant things, part of a distant creature.

Tattered remnants. Prodigals. Foundlings.

Bastards.

Scratching in the ruins, reclaiming scraps. Misshapen offspring, stunted in their minds and their morals, reaching blindly after treasures lost to circumstance.

Her heart beats a slow, strong tattoo against her ribcage. Her chest rises and falls laboriously beneath the steel-boned corset of her uniform.

She starts towards him.

"... You have me, Your Grace."

She steps closer as he sinks into his chair. She sees his upper lip curl when she draws level with his side of the desk.

She is close enough to hear his teeth click, to feel, like a faint shiver, the exhalation of breath as his eyes rove up and down her body. Her collarbone to her jaw, her hip to her temple, her legs to her hair.

It is strange, but she recognizes in him an acquiescence of inanimate matter to the movements of the one who animates it... to _her_ movements. Fingers and clay. She knows Francesco is the type of man who sees himself everywhere, the renditions ill or otherwise –– the dullest surfaces reflect his image; even in others he perceives himself, thereby bringing to light their deepest secrets. She wonders if she is the first person not merely to stare back at him, but to turn and tilt the mirror, to ripple the pond, until the reflection becomes lost in its own prismatic distortions.

He likes what he sees, she thinks.

His pupils are fixed in a position of wide black dilatation –– Paula has seen it before, when a sword cores through a skull. Brain death.

He is far broader than she is, but perched as he is at the edge of his chair, straddling him is merely a mild encumbrance instead of an outright impossibility.

His expression doesn't change as he pulls her into his lap, carefully folding the skirt of her habit over her thighs, before arranging her to face him, stockinged legs tucked on either side of his hips.

She is painfully, acutely aware of the solid strength of him beneath her, the incendiary drift of his breath against her cheek. His clothes are immaculate, the finest crimson silk, the heat of his skin burning through wherever it presses against hers; she feels the throb of her pulse in every extremity, beneath her straining a man enraged by his fate, driven by loneliness and loathing and, yes, lust.

The material of his breeches rasps against the tender tissues at the junction of her legs. Placing a hand on his chest, she steadies herself as she begins to rock back and forth, increasing the friction between her thighs. His face is right before her, and his saber-silver eyes watch her unceasingly.

Without breaking his gaze, he shifts one hand to cup her bottom, to encourage the roll of her hips, while the other travels over the heavy wool of her habit to knead rather intently at her chest. There is something in his touch that revolts her even as she aches for it, her breasts growing in short course tender under his ministrations.

Suddenly, he bows his head to her shoulder, so she can feel the breath of muttered nothings in her ear, whispered into the dark.

The flush from the alcohol, from his layers upon layers of ecclesiastical accoutrements, from the fire in the grate... she feels warmth on her skin, and shudders at the novelty.

Her free hand slides towards his waist, probing between the silk of his robes. A violent little exhalation of breath against the side of her throat signals having at last arrived at her objective.

Her small hand slips around length and breadth of his erection. The flesh is blushing, the fine filigree of veins and vessels almost scaldingly hot. Holding the length against her palm, she uses her thumb to circle the head, rasping the tissue in a slow and steady motions. Her hand rises and falls; her thighs work beside his hips. Silver plasters itself to her reddening cheeks. Their foreheads knock together.

"Knees," he hisses suddenly, hand straying to her elbow, pressing into her like a pair of calipers, as if measuring her for muscle; by his eyes, he finds her pound of flesh acceptable. More than acceptable. _"Now."_

There is no empathy in his gaze. No compassion or care whatsoever. Only contempt. For her, for the world.

For himself.

And yet...

She trusts him because if not in station, if not in prestige, if not in power... then in shame and in self-hatred, they are the same.

She trusts him because, until today, every time she has trusted him before, he satisfied that trust. He is more constant than her murdered parents. He is more constant than Petros. He is more constant than even the Church.

Perhaps it is because, much like her own heart, he doesn't promise quite so much.

"Yes, Eminence."

* * *

_Why, God? You made Man in your own image. Why then do so many lack goodness and grace? And why is that we are so easily drawn to hate and kill each other?_

_Why, God?_

The retrofitted missile silo in the bowels of the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul is a gloomy chamber, heavy with the smell of smoldering wax and liquid hydrogen propellent. It is a massive, ancient place, the walls hewn from rough stone wedges, the same blocks worn down into a polished surface beneath her boots. The black ironwork of a control console is the only fragment of furniture amidst a wasteland of blank stone.

Paula heard a story, once, about the famous church on Petrov hill. According to legend, during the Thirty Years War, the invading Swedes promised that they would call off the attack if they had not succeeded in taking the city by midday on the 15th of August. The battle underway, a number of shrewd citizens decided to ring the bells at eleven o'clock, fooling the Swedes into breaking the siege and leaving empty-handed.

Paula had Brother Philippos sever the bell ropes. One can never be too careful...

Out of the shadows, tethered from corner to corner in the vast hall, a thin specter stalks into view.

"Please step away from the panel, Sister Paula," a man's voice calls out to her; she hears him disengage the safety of his sidearm and draw close to her in mincing, careful steps. "The AX will be taking control of the missile."

"Will they indeed..." she murmurs; Paula registers an uncommon frustration from the unceasing parade of obstructions –– the emotion cold and callous, geared to rage, to revenge. First Garcia de Asturias, then Havel, now this newcomer... she considers possible courses of action, allowing her wrath to hone her focus on this newest special agent dispatched from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs... and the best way to kill him.

"And what leads to you think the Curia will allow this interference to go unpunished, Enforcement Officer?" she regards the intruder out of the corner of her eye, pitiless but patient.

She does well to hide her surprise at seeing the lucent blue eyes, wide and frightened, blinking myopically behind their spectacles, the tall, gauche bearing, the untidy tail of silver hair...

Time and memory register as brief patterns cutting in and out of the darkness, random and indiscriminate. There is nothing stable, no fixed points of reference. Images are instantaneously plucked from her mind and stretched wafer-thin over wide frames, each becoming a world in itself.

_Nightroad..._

She remembers that the man's name is Nightroad...

Paula suppresses the shiver; the cathedral is cold in the chill night air...

"This is an official operation, sanctioned by the Congregation of Doctrine. Your willful obstruction of my holy duty is a blemish on Cardinal Sforza's entire department." She pauses, allowing the full weight of her words to sink in. "You would continue to act, knowing you risk the reputation and career of your superior?"

"If details of the Inquisition's operation are made public, it's your superior who will suffer for it," Nightroad counters, far more obstinate than his unsophisticated and awkward posture appears to suggest. "We're very well aware that canisters of cyanide gas, the production of which is expressly prohibited by canon law, are loaded onto the nosecone of that missile. If the College, not to mention the common lords, learn that the Duke of Florence was the one to endorse not only the manufacture, but the employment of chemical warfare against a civilian population, then Cardinal di Medici will face summary excommunication, if not execution."

The air breathes a cool whisper across her skin. _"Sapere aude,"_ murmurs Paula, her tone softening. She lowers her left hand from the controls, though rests her right on the hilt of her remaining knife. "So... what is it you desire, Enforcement Officer? Do you wish to bargain for the life of this Apostate?"

She gestures to a man laying prostrate on the floor –– subcutaneous fluid leaking from every orifice, his arm missing, a hole gouged in his sternum. Dying, and taking his time about it.

The man, the traitor Vaclav Havel, coughs sputum and blood all over himself. He makes a small, damp sound of despair, and his mouth trembles. His expression is gangrenous with sorrow –– an anguished misery, almost madness. Only a life lived in sin, Paula affirms to herself, could produce that particular suffering, that corrupting despair.

She ought to know.

"I want to save the lives of all the people in this city, including him," declares Nightroad; she sees him edging closer to the traitor's side. His boots grind and chafe against the flagstones in an attempt to shuffle himself along the floor –– desperation, evidently, outweighing discretion. "I beg you, Sister... contact the Vatican army and urge your generals to recognize the bloodless surrender of Brno. If you invoke Cardinal di Medici's authority––"

Ah... "I will not lie in His Eminence's name, Father Nightroad," she says, not unkindly. "And I will not disobey a direct order from my superior. We are both servants of the Holy Mother Church, and soldiers of God. Surely you understand."

"I understand it, Sister Paula," intones Nightroad gravely. His pale eyes are painfully raw, as though ready for bitter tears. "But I will not allow it."

Paula stares at them both –– Nightroad and Havel –– seeing not a pair of traitors but two worthless, sniveling heretics. They wither in her gaze, their bodies sinking into themselves. Brittle, frozen angels in a brittle, frozen tableau.

Weak. Breakable.

"Unfortunate." Paula turns from the weapons console with a look of grim satisfaction on her face. "As you say... I will not allow it. You cannot leave here alive, Father Nightroad."

She has spent the past several minutes shifting her weight to her dominant leg, moving quietly so as not to alert her audience to her intentions. Faster than Nightroad can follow, she raises her dominant arm in front of her midriff until it is perpendicular to the ground, bending at the elbow until her weapon is raised alongside her head. The knife spins out from her hand, and the space reverberates with the unmistakable, keen-edged screech of blade sliding along sharpened blade, snapping through the air with an inexorable division. A gust of cold wind sends gooseflesh dancing across Nightroad's neck, and he raises his right arm as though to shield himself, acting entirely on some impulsive but lancinating instinct –– if not for his well-timed lunge, Paula's knife may very well have reduced his carotid to a fine crimson mist.

As it is, the blade vivisects the barrel and cylinder of the Priest's antique percussion revolver, the weapon bearing the brunt of the attack in place of its hapless owner.

"Father Nightroad, you are an acquaintance of the Apostate who kidnapped His Holiness. You would defend him, even at the cost of your own safety?"

The AX Agent stares her down resolutely, tossing the useless cross-section of his revolver aside, his face crumpling as he registers the futility of his mission. Nightroad's expression is easy to read –– as easy Petros's –– and though the traitor, Havel, is better at hiding his emotions, he isn't perfect. They do not like killing, but they have hardened themselves to the necessity. She feels a pang of sympathy for the hurt she sees in their eyes. It is misplaced, of course, but it is genuine enough to make her pity them. "I would."

"Vaclav Havel is a traitor."

"As you say."

"I do, and so he shall die with these sinners, in a manner no different––"

"You mean to slaughter ten thousand unarmed civilians, Sister Paula!"

"I have my orders, Enforcement Officer. I will destroy this Sodom... along with every man, woman, and child rutting in it." Paula launches an ancillary knife at her target, who leaps aside with ungainly precision. "Despite your misguided loyalties, Nightroad, I harbor no ill will against you. But your knowledge of the hydrogen cyanide presents a credible threat to the political security of my superior. I cannot allow you to leave Brno alive."

Adjusting her posture, Paula forecasts a feint; her stance draws Nightroad's defensive focus to his chest and head. He crosses his arms at eye-height while she throws low. The thin Priest goes down on the first blow, the pommel of her blade blowing out his kneecap, forcing him to the ground. He tries to stand, but Paula is already moving: she plants a foot in his stomach with every whit of her phenomenal strength.

Abel's body jackknifes before striking a retaining wall, gouging a crater in the stone. He fails to draw a single breath before retching; her strike has split his stomach lining, if the crimson clots mixed with vomit are any indication. His blue eyes roll; there is foam at his mouth and his breathing grows dangerously labored.

"I know you, Abel Nightroad... AX Agent Krusnik," intones Paula gravely, peering down at the man writhing on the floor with the assessing eye of a connoisseur inspecting flesh on a butcher block. "Six feet tall. One hundred and forty-three pounds. Age: unknown. Place of birth: unknown. Battle strength... negligible. I have collected credible intelligence on all of Lady Sforza's agents. I know your strengths, and I know your weaknesses. The latter vastly outperforms the former. You cannot defeat me."

Nightroad opens his eyes, lustreless in his humiliation, when he feels Paula's fingers in his hair.

She yanks his head back. The Priest gasps but doesn't cry out as she lifts his body from the floor, pulling until his chest bows off the flagstones. She stares down at the carnation sprays blooming and bleeding at the corners of his mouth. Nightroad's double-bridged spectacles are cracked down the center. Cautiously, she reaches down and breaks them apart; he winces, blinking myopically in the gloom.

"I will hear your final confession and absolve you of your sins, Abel Nightroad." He tries to twist away but Paula tightens her grip, holding him still. "And then I am going to kill you," she says softly.

"I..." he starts, croaking. But his voice trails off, a dying cadence.

Paula senses a shift in her peripheries. The traitor, Havel, is on his knees, clutching his lean, haggard face in his remaining hand. The Inquisitor stares at him; as if sensing her gaze, Vaclav slowly raises his head, and his expression is so slack with despair he looks almost simpleminded. "Sister, I beg you... cease this senseless slaughter," he says in an unnaturally calm voice; he swallows as Paula brings her blade close to Nightroad's narrow throat. "Do not shame yourself by putting an innocent and honest man to death, for the Lord will not acquit the guilty."

His expression is apocalyptic, stricken with the tormented, hopeless anguish of a man cursed to live with a love that is not love, a conspiracy of affections, a strange, terrible dance of decency and respect, resentment and bitterness.

"I cannot allow Agent Krusnik to live; his knowledge demands his execution. Besides... God did not pardon the angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, condemning them to the pit before His final judgement; He did not spare the ancient world when He brought the flood on its ungodly people; He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made of them an example of what fate befalls the ungodly.

"God is Law," she intones, the old apothegm coming back to her as naturally as breathing. "When a soul breaks the Law, it is in sin; under the impetus of grace, if it turns to God, there is penance. When a soul in sin refuses to change, God sends Judgement. To break the Law means to reject grace, to deny Christ, to despise His sacrifice, and to be lost. You, Father Vaclav Havel..." She turns from Nightroad to face the blood-soaked anchorite, his hollow-cheeked countenance stricken with grief; her tone, for all her condemnation, remains solemn and calm: "You blaspheme in matters you do not understand. You are a brute beast, a creature of instinct, born only to be caught and destroyed, and like a beast you, too, will perish at my hand. Some things are unforgivable."

"And how to you think you will be judged, Sister Paula? You, who have caused so much pain, so many deaths."

"I have been true to Him. I have stood up for His name when all around me––"

"For His name," says Vaclav. "But what of what He taught? What of the innocents you have killed in His name? Command an end to the slaughter of those whom you would call your enemy, Sister Paula. Let them return to their homes. Let them embrace their wives and children. Let them beg forgiveness from God, for He alone has the right to pass judgement!"

She stares at him, the ragged stigmata across his throat and the back of one hand, the scourge marks, the blood and amber-colored serum stains from where she punctured his intestines.

A pitiful, wounded creature.

She knows, then, a verity that is higher than his pronouncements of mercy. There is a thing which pierces and governs her and which cannot be grasped by his pleas for her forbearance. There is a truth which has become evident to her, though she knows she can never hope to put it into words a man like him can understand. She does not kill to preserve her honor, since she denies that her honor is at stake.

She kills because she is the Lady of Death.

She is not really alive... nor wholly dead. An animated corpse, locked away forever from the warmth and kindness and comfort of living people, and at the same time, deprived of the oblivion of death. She is afraid, yes, for her soul's sake, but not on account of her killing... on account of her _envy_. She cannot ask God to forgive her for what she truly does not regret. She is not sorry for the lives she has taken... she only sorrows for the fact she cannot join them.

Perhaps... therein lies the root of her calm, the reason she can so easily surrender her character. There is nothing at her center of fidelity, of goodness and compassion; she knows only the dark underbelly of life, its cruelty, sterility and duplicity. She has disavowed forgiveness... and with it, pity. The only true grace resides with the dead, because the dead are empty, neither awful nor remarkable. Their souls are with God.

And only the dead should bury the dead..

"I understand, Enforcement Officer." She hears her own voice as if from a great distance. "I understand exactly what it is to kill, exactly the enormity of what is lost at the moment of death. I understand how valuable each and every life is.

"I just don't care."

"I know." His voice is sad.

"Saint Augustine," murmurs Nightroad, wincing from the pressure on his scalp, "insisted that Scripture taught nothing but compassion. We can only guess at what the Lord may intend in His retributions, Paula, but we may be confident that any passage that seems to preach hatred and is not conducive to love must be interpreted allegorically and made to speak of charity! Of Mercy!"

Her lips twitch. No creature would ever call the expression which flits across Sister Paula's face a smile, but she chuckles nonetheless, a soft, hissing laugh, which holds more bitterness than humor. "I regret we cannot see your exegetical exercise to its conclusion, Father Nightroad." Her head snaps around and the silver-haired man jerks back as though dodging a bite. "Though I may conclude that an act is in itself a grave offense, I must entrust the judgement of the soul to the justice and mercy of God. My duty is merely to unmake your soul and deliver it to Him."

"Those are the words of a whipped dog, Sister Paula," insists the silver-haired Enforcement Officer. There is anger in his voice, desperate anger, and an adamantine conviction. "A mongrel trained to snarl at every sin––!" Nightroad breaks off painfully as she wrenches his head again and bends closer.

"A whipped dog..." Her voice holds no reproach but, instead, a blinding fury, cold enough to freeze the air in her lungs. The words, when they come, are flat, the intonation minimal: "Father Abel, I would caution you to choose your next words with great care."

"You're going to kill me either way, so _yes_, Sister Paula... you're a pathetic, whipped dog!"

"Do elaborate, pray," she says, in a manner which indicates very clearly that not only does she not wish for him to respond, but also that she resents the fact that he still has ample oxygen to form the words.

Though his face is twisted in severe pain, his eyes are as serene as a snowy lane. Painfully but decisively, Abel continues: "But it doesn't have to be like this... God's grief at the unspeakable things we do to one another is beyond measuring," says Nightroad, "but so is His mercy. It might seem a terrible thing to say to someone like you, Sister Paula."

"Someone like me."

"One who has lost and suffered so much at the hands of hatred and violence. But true courage is not to hate our enemy, any more than to fight and kill him. To love him, to love in the teeth of our hate... that is real bravery.

"I know, Paula. I understand. Oh, trust me... I _know_... because I used to be like you, too..."

She endures a silence so profound that she feels as though she is penetrating a solid object, a material space without shape nor boundary. Beyond her apprehension, it hums as sweetly as struck crystal. Full of resonance and implication –– a tension at the cusp of shattering.

She hurries the silence along by kicking Nightroad in the temple. His head snaps to the side, his hair tearing from her grasp, and he heaves blood. "Paula..." he begins after swallowing several times.

"I will take your wisdom under advisement, Father Abel," she mutters, before blading her hand and driving her palm into his solar plexus. She hears the crepitus from his sternum cracking. "But only after I have beheaded you, and delivered this city to God."

Nightroad clutches his chest, groping for air, his complexion purple.

Where anger and indignation once boiled and spat there is now only calm –– the grace and certainty of self-command that guides Paula's every movement.

"Die, Enforcement Officer."

She sees something flash in his eyes. Some clarity. Some acceptance. A light that forecasts a devastation divine in its magnitude and boundless in its scope.

"I am so sorry, Sister Paula."

The beatific expression on Nightroad's face resembles what one might find sculpted in Bernini's marble or frozen in the rictus grimace of the recently dead –– an unsmiling smile, sorrow and acceptance staring out from the same face.

In the dim candlelight, his pale eyes appear almost red.

"Nanomachine Krusnik zero-two... forty-percent limited activation... _authorized_..."

The keening air reeks of salt and ozone.

In the near-darkness, Abel Nightroad's form flares with magnesium light, emitting scything beams that slice across her eyes, half-blinding her and driving her back. In an instant, bright, dreadful flashes of lightning rent the darkness, and Paula's cry of surprise is drowned out by a peal of thunder which seems able to break the bones of heaven itself...

Paula looks into Nightroad's crimson eyes and finds herself reflected there. A vicious animal, expression contorted with hatred. She sees her own face –– her nose and mouth mere sockets, wet and dark. She sees her hands grasping at her weapons

She sees, then, fear.

_"Yes."_ Nightroad's furious eyes shine, a hundred points of light reflected in their facets. _"We are both beaten, worthless creatures..."_

Lightning flashes. Something smacks into the side of Paula's face, hard enough to loosen several teeth. Head spinning, she sees an enormous, shadowy form resolve itself from the yellow and purple splotches detonating behind her eyes. Flames of agony roar along Paula's spine. Her chest aches and each breath, when it comes, is shallow and labored. She feels as though chains are binding her neck to her feet, the pain forcing her into a tight fetal position.

The horrific figure strobes in and out of view. In between flashes, the darkness is total. Vaclav is breathing noisily, perhaps crying. No longer convulsing, he lays rag-limp. In one lightburst, she glances over at the traitor, who is indeed weeping, his blood-soaked eyes fixed on the manifestation, his face exaltant.

The pain plucks a thread at the edge of her consciousness. With a soft rustling sound, almost a sigh, everything settles, and as the darkness gathers her jealously to itself, the world goes blissfully black...

* * *

She registers the strong, sour odor of mildew; her skin smarts against cold flagstones. She realizes, dimly, distantly, that she is laying on her side, her breath hitching and rasping in her lungs. Her chest crunches as her fractured ribs grate together, the shattered bones of her sternum pressing against her breastplate. Blood trickles along the lobe of her ear and into it. Strangely... she feels little pain.

Paula looks at her arms, twisted beneath her. The burns scrawl patterns from her elbows to her wrists –– recursive fractals of scorched flesh like dendrites scored into her skin.

Lightning burns, she rationalizes.

She lays still for a long while, curled in a tight fetal position. She gasps great, ragged breaths, the effort immensely difficult through the hemorrhaging of her chest. Her bones feel as if they have been loosened within her flesh, which itself hangs limply from her skeleton, flaccid and gelatinous. Time ticks away like a uranium clock, one decaying molecule after another.

Paula sucks in a breath. She doesn't want to bleed out like a butchered sow in this miserable excuse of a country, this city without God... this Sodom that drinks too deeply of everything it touches.

Despite her best efforts, Brno is swallowing her, too, and she hates that it makes her afraid.

Somewhere in the rubble of her thoughts, she realizes she can hear the steady _plink plink_ of blood against stone.

She looks up, towards the control console.

Neither one of them, it seems, is quite dead yet.

Vaclav Havel's mortal wounds ooze blood down the gaunt paleness of his face. His chest is torn open. The entirety of his midsection is split. What little remains of his cassock is streaked a damning shade of red. His remaining limbs have been twisted, with some exceptional force, in the opposite direction to which they have been designed.

And yet, in the soft light beneath the cathedral, Havel's remaining eye is as green and gentle as Monet's lilies, even if his gaze holds only the airless cold of a corpse. One eye fixates on her as if searching for salvation, the other, a bloody unrecognisable pulp, bears no relation to its staring counterpart.

"Wh... where..." hisses Paula, teeth clenched; the effort leaves her white with exhaustion.

"León and Tres..." Havel breathes, something rattling wetly behind the words, the Priest's thin lips growing cyanosed before her eyes, "are preparing to announce Brno's unconditional surrender, and Abel has called your... your colleague. He is on his way... here. You will live. But it's... it's over... the seige is over..."

"... I see."

Whatever frustration or fury Paula may have felt for Vaclav Havel in that moment simply comes and goes without gaining a foothold. Anger requires nerves, connections, sensory input, where she is as numb as frost on a cold metal surface. And tired.

Terribly, terribly tired.

The awful emptiness and sorrow rising like a mist in Havel's opaque green eye stirs in Paula's soul a helpless, suffocating acceptance that there is nothing to be done to rectify her mistakes: too much time has passed, too much damage has been done –– physically and otherwise –– for her to salvage the situation.

She is certain, in her innermost heart, that she has failed.

"I thought... God had forsaken me..." says Vaclav, a cold whisper that lingers at the base of her skull. "He does great things with the meager, and beautiful things with the misshapen. He chooses the smallest, the humblest, the most broken as His servants... he reaches through the firmament, and in love makes things new... and where I saw weakness, He offered me grace...

"His mercy –– in the face of my arrogance, despite the despair to which I've so stalwartly clung –– is stunning, Hanna. It's so... so beautiful..."

The spasmodic shaking in Paula's slender shoulders ratchets to a fever pitch. "How... how do you know my...?"

Vaclav's severe expression softens, and his voice becomes almost like an entreaty: "Forgive me, Hanna... Emanuele's cruelty... Francesco's private vendettas made sacred... I could have spared you all this..."

There hovers in the air a charged expectancy, turbulent, tingling along her nerve endings to the core of her, so that, for a suspended moment, she feels a peculiar sense of empathy with the dying man.

_Only the dead can bury the dead..._

_"Odpocznij moje dziecko..."_ murmurs Havel musically. Singing... he is singing... _"Dzień się skończył... Słońce zaświeci gdy przyjdzie poranek..."_

He whispers the words of a Polish lullaby, his voice traversing the decades, so heavy it breaks what it touches, so beautiful it rings in her with eternal resonance, rusty with the sound of despair and the hoarse cries that issue from paroxysms of pain.

The song is an unvarnished confession, a plea tinged with something like bitterness, but the bitterness of a philosopher, one directed at the transience of the world, at its heartbreaking beauty that collides constantly with an awareness of the fact that everything gets taken away, in the end.

A lament that true happiness, true grace, belongs to God alone.

"I forgive you," he breathes. "Poor soul..."

Blood seeps from her open wounds... into her ears... her mouth.

It tastes of salt and failure, a bright red shame soaking the slick stones, the sediments of the cathedral, the steps of the silo. Paula's heart spasms in her chest like a trout. The ground grows sticky and viscous beneath her twisted limbs, staining listlessly colored sackcloth and ash-caked skin.

A terrible clarity dominates everything, as though the world is made of a crystal so fine she only has to flick part of it with her fingernail for it to shatter.

"It's you..." she murmurs... "it can't be..."

"I forgive you," he says again, so gentle. Warm and benevolent, soft and comforting, like he was that day on the banks of the Wisła, so long ago... when, in the face of all the horror, all the chaos, he embraced a frightened little girl and shielded her from the violence.

When he decided, in radical defiance, to show her kindness.

His single green eye has mounted pain and suffering into a high, almost beatific calm. He seems to know, to accept, to welcome, even, what awaits him. His farewells are said, his preparations are made, and, in the end, he surrenders his life gladly.

"Hanna Svárovský... I forgive you."

Her throat grows thick with an emotion that may be loneliness, or sadness, or self-pity, or despair, or all of those things at once. She wants to cry or snarl, her chest trussed with a long suppressed scream, but the abrasive, hollow ache seems to sandpaper away all expression, leaving her eyes flat and her face numb.

After a while, she can only laugh.

Spittle on her chin, blood under her tongue, tears on her cheeks...

The indulgences of such abject despair have been banished forever, blunted by discipline and her duty to the Church. Desiring death is a distant fiction, a possibility that has only ever been a vague consideration in her head, and a cardinal sin besides. A course of action for heretics and apostates, those weak in mind or faith. Poor people and cowards.

Now it sits on her heart like a coal in a boiler. Hell's warmth beckons to her, a pendulum at its extreme, gathering momentum for the plunge.

She wants to die. She prays for it. Through the roar in her ears, she begs for it.

But she can only laugh.

Laugh at the cruelty of man... the cruelty of God.

The sound lies close with grief, the numbness near acuity and the memories with forgetfulness. The realization gives cruel, cold amusement first, then cracking pain, the patterns moving in a spiral... not the line, the shift of responsibility, she has come to expect... its distance increasing from an epicenter only to return again, one circle removed.

Time, arguments, the full moon of the vampire's midnight, violence, and, most of all, agony.

All wretched things are circular.

"I forgive you, Hanna. And I am so, so sorry. _Proszę wybaczyć_."

She can only laugh.

Until, at last, the years of violence and loneliness manifest all at once in dense tears and heavy sobs and a shortness of breath and a profound sense of loss, overwhelming in its force... the loss of childhood, of normalcy, of happiness, of sanity, of trust, of dignity, of humanity, of love... everything.

Everything.

"This is not your fault," whispers Havel. His teeth are red. His single eye weeps crimson.

He is dying.

He is dying.

He is dying...

She killed him.

Butchered him.

She shivers, shifting to one elbow, trying to lever herself upright. Failing, she rolls on to her back with a terrible whimper. A bony hand rises to stroke her hair.

"_Shhh_... Hush child... Hush. It will be all right. It will be all right."

"I'm sorry..." A quiet, almost like love, passes between them. "I'm sorry..."

"I know," he says again. He still sounds so sad.

When he dies, the air seems suddenly defiled by the absence of his music.

When Philippos finds her, Paula is still weeping.

* * *

The Grotta di Lourdes is serene and still beneath the snow. Vines crawl over granite fountains and along the damp stone floor. Evergreen needles and snowflakes drift in cumulus shapes from the tops of the trees. The flurries are falling so thickly that just a few meters away, visibility blurs and vanishes.

The snow makes the day not only white but uniform; snow permits –– invites, even –– a certain seclusion, whereas sunlight, by contrast, discountenances any who seek to work around the hours with any subterfuge.

In the center of the grotto, under the watching eyes of the Madonna, Paula sits alone, drenched to the skin, her dusky eyes countless miles away, shadowed by old pains. Her fists are ashen where they are knitted together on her lap –– a show of vulnerability as rare as hen's teeth.

"You're to be the prosecution, eh?"

The question shatters her bucolic isolation. Paula says nothing for a little while, before getting up, patting her vestments absently, pulling a soaked sleeve across her face in a futile attempt to wipe away the meltwater.

A clear-eyed man puffs his pipe alight. The red glow in the bowl looks warm and welcome as pungent smoke drifts through the grotto.

"I am." At his expression, Paula ventures: "Despite what you may think of me, I hold no ill-will against your superior."

"Indeed?" He reclines against the wall, arms crossed, pipe stem clenched between his teeth, wearing his most amiable and impressionable expression. His eyes are too clear, too piercing. Some color caught between blue and green. He has the beginning of wrinkles and the easy manner of one who has already made his mistakes. He is an academically handsome man of more than common height, and even without peering at him she can feel his speculative eyes on her. "Why is that?"

"She is a Cardinal, a leading dignitary of an institution I am sworn to defend and venerate. Appointing you, of all people, as her defense speaks to her good judgement. You have distinguished yourself among the AX's company by being a man of at least nominal scruples."

He snorts smoke like an indignant dragon. His words are ostensibly humorous, but there is a certain shade of provocation in his tone: "How very kind of you to say so."

"I labored under the impression you took these matters as seriously as they deserve."

"And just how seriously is that? For the Inquisition, I mean. As you can well imagine, the AX is beside themselves."

"Very, in my opinion. And of my cohort, I believe it is my interpretation and presentation of events which ought to hold the most relevance to these proceedings. Although..." Paula pauses. "I daresay I will sound like a fool compared to a learned man like yourself, and for that, I apologize.

"Well," says the Priest, his Albionian accent disarmingly charming, "you hector yourself, but that's not a judgement anyone can make about themselves, is it? I will say this: if you are a fool, Sister, you are an extremely well-mannered one."

She smiles slightly. "And if I fail to meet your expectations?"

"I'm rather counting on it. Wiseacres tend to be intellectually timid."

Her smile expands a centimeter. "Another of the AX's contradictions?"

"No, my dear, this particular contradiction is entirely my own creation."

She decides, then, that she likes this man. "My associate recently attended one of your lectures at the University of Rome. Brother Petros tends not to be reticent with his emotions, but his admiration of you was exceptionally effusive, even for him. I regret we in the Inquisition cannot renew our acquaintance under more favorable circumstances."

"Regret, eh? In spite of the fact that one of my colleagues put you in the hospital, Sister? Forgive me, but I've never credited magnanimity with featuring among the Inquisition's cardinal virtues."

"In a just world," she continues, ignoring the comment –– she still carries the scars from Nightroad's lightning, "a sinner would be struck down by the wrath of God. None of this politicking between our respective institutions would be necessary."

The man strokes his chin. He murmurs in a slightly ironic tone of voice: "Young lady, in my experience, Providence leaves the work of conviction to us mortals."

"We are fallible, where God is power and order. God is Law."

The words are intoned almost subconsciously, but spoken aloud, she resents how precarious they sound –– like a fistful of flowers pressed between the pages of an old book: fragrance lost, colors faded, fragility, ultimately, turning to brittleness.

A pronounced silence greets her words. Glancing at the Priest, Paula notices his sudden preoccupation with knocking just the right amount of ash from his pipe into a nearby snowbank.

"Perhaps," the man concedes, blowing a ring of smoke. Every time she turns to look at him, he is gazing into the middle distance with an affected expression of glum resignation. "But then again," he decides, "Jesus didn't hold up a spear in response to a spear. He took the spear into His side, and in doing so, revealed our brutality for what it was."

"I'm not sure I follow, Father Wordsworth."

William Walter Wordsworth shakes his head disapprovingly. From his expression, it is not clear whether he is more unhappy about her apparent bemusement or the fact he feels the necessity to deconstruct his logic for her full understanding. He clears his throat a token couple of times and elaborates, "Crucifixion was no more God's invention than Noah's ark. Unlike the latter, however, the cross was an instrument of torture, a method of intimidation created by an empire that needed to keep its conquered people in check. In all our need for an eye for an eye, I have to wonder sometimes if Jesus' sacrifice on the cross is an answer not to God's wrath, but to ours." Discreetly, he coughs into his closed fist. "Perhaps God's son hung on a cross to demonstrate the inevitable outcome of retributive justice in the face of a force that used violence to expand, that survived only by placing souls under its oppressive heel––"

"Do you hate me?" she blurts on some wild and ill-advised instinct.

A long, pregnant pause. "... I beg your pardon?"

"Do you hate me... for killing that man? For killing your friend."

Silence... vast and echoing, like the long, marble-tiled galleries of the Apostolic Palace of the Lateran. Wordsworth gives no sign of answering her at first. He stays in his place, seeming to have wrapped himself, like his tobacco smoke, in a silhouetted composure not easily disturbed.

A few nearby street lamps flare on automatically, guttering fitfully in the encroaching dark.

But then the Professor takes the pipe from between his teeth. He licks his lips, picking over his words like fruit in a market stall, testing and discarding twice as many as he chooses:

"Vaclav would have forgiven you, my dear. Vaclav would have pitied you, and loved you. Vaclav would have absolved you of all wrongdoing, and lamented only that, as you say, politicking had placed you and he on opposite sides.

"Sister Paula... I am not Vaclav Havel."

* * *

As the meeting wears on, Paula finds it more difficult than usual to hold her peace.

"You thrice-damned, sodding moron!"

Cardinal di Medici tears into Brother Petros like a crow picking at a carcass, the former florid with fury, the latter grimacing in shame.

"Not only have you neglected to procure any hard evidence tying Caterina to those bloodsucking bastards," snarls Francesco, gray eyes molten, "you failed to so much as capture the brutes! More, you sacrificed an entire Carabinieri battalion, a Goliath tank, and three goddamn battleships on the altar of your incompetence! For pure, vacillating stupidity, for a superb inability to command, for ignorance combined with bad judgement, you stand alone, Brother Petros!"

"Forgive me, Eminence," the Director mutters, ears pink. "There were... unforeseen circumstances. The sandstorm––"

"You have the audacity to blame your failure on the blasted weather?!" She wonders, for the space of a few seconds, whether the Cardinal might step out from behind his desk and strike the Chief. "Perhaps you'd care to correct my version of events," dares Francesco, incensed beyond anything she has seen before, tiny bubbles of froth forming at the corners of the mouth, "because here I labored under the impression you started with a good army, a secure position, some excellent officers, a disorganized enemy, and repeated opportunities to save the situation!"

There is a long silence, somewhere at the edge of which the booted footfalls of soldiers clatter noisily, competing with the drumming rain. In the diffuse light Petros looks even more strained than when she last saw him –– which, considering the former occasion he was divested of his tunic and swathed head to foot in bandages, full of enough painkillers to fell an elephant, is something of an accomplishment. It feels strange... seeing him without the rattle of his mail armor and the weight of the two halves of his lance at his side.

Observing Petros's face, she sees it slowly stiffen into blankness. There is no fear there, or pain. There is no expression at all.

Paula feels something cold at the base of her neck.

Francesco leans forward, expression rented in a snarl. "Still with us, Chief Inquisitor?"

Slowly, like lifting the handle of a rusty pump, Petros raises his head.

"Yes, Your Grace," he says distantly. His voice emerges slowly, his voice pitched at its usual volume but devoid of any emotion –– flat and featureless, the words so glassy everything seems to slide off them. His face goes chalk-white with the effort.

Standing opposite Petros, Francesco, with his silver-stricken hair showing under his zucchetto and his keen-edged, metallic eyes, projects a commanding strength... a marked and upsetting contrast to the Knight with his harrowed expression, smashed nose and bruised sockets.

The rain falls with a fierce malignity; it holds within itself an odd consonance with the anger suffusing the Cardinal's office. Thunder and lightning crash over their heads, noises that make the ground shake. Light dances in the deluge from the dome of San Pietro, high above.

"You may be able to occasionally see to an enemy, Petros," the Cardinal concedes with a cruel curl of his lip. "Provided you manage to get your Screamer pointed in the right direction and the enemy does you the favor of throwing himself in front of it in precisely the right way.

"In any case, the eternal punishment of our serious sins is taken away by the merits of Christ in the Divine tribunal of penance," intones Francesco. "You, Brother Petros, will fast for a month, and present yourself to Sister Paula before Compline every evening for the same duration. She will administer ten lashes with the knout."

"Eminence, the Chief's injuries..." murmurs Paula, managing to keep her tone pragmatic.

Francesco is not in the mood. "If I want an appraisal of my orders, Sister Paula," he seethes, gnashing his teeth and stabbing a finger at her chest, "I shall ask for it!"

Petros looks stricken, bowing his head in defeat; Paula merely lifts her chin.

Francesco's lips part as if he is about to deliver another scathing reply. As his gaze travels over her, however, his expression softens by the merest fraction. "Paula, what is the Inquisition's status? The consular officer at the Carthaginian embassy has not responded to my missive, and according to what little the Ministry of State Affairs has elected to divulge, the regional governors have filed legislation to sever ties with the Vatican entirely."

"Your Grace," she murmurs, "An Èquipe under the direction of Brother Matthaios is combing through the Palazzo Spada's cached records for references to any formal correspondence between Her Grace Cardinal Sforza and the Empire. Sister Kate's networks are protected with hardware and software firewalls and other security measures, but certain directories are vulnerable."

"Matthaios? He's no technician."

"In the Vatican ecclesiastical archives, scholarly credentials, religious affiliation, even engineering certification carry less weight than connections, Eminence. Brother Matthaios is one of those few who have obtained special permission to consult restricted materials. He is able to tap some extraordinary sources of influence."

The Cardinal frowns, holding the lapels of his scarlet robes with an imperious air. His features are locked, rigid, and stern, so unyielding that an hour seems to have done the work of years.

"Very well," he growls, stalking towards the Chief Inquisitor on his way out of the office. "We may yet be able to salvage the situation. Be certain Matthaios proceeds on my direction or not at all."

Francesco marches around to face his direct subordinate. The Cardinal's silver eyes blaze into Petros's blue ones as he seizes the Knight's collar and yanks him close, all traces of civility vanishing –– not that, Paula notes wearily, Francesco exhibited very many to begin with. And then, close to Petros's ear, he hisses: "I do not make terms with incompetence."

He wrenches the door open with enough force to pull it from its hinges. He departs with a reverberant slam and a barrage of heavy footfalls.

She is too tired, at first, to even step out from behind Francesco's desk. And from the look of Petros, he is more tired still.

They both fall into an awkward silence, and she passes the time by reciting to herself Francesco's order regarding the prescribed punishment. After what seems like hours, a smothered gasp from over the top of the desk draws her attention. Petros lets out a little cough, and she fancies she can hear him wince with pain.

"You look like you crawled out of a grave," she notes quietly.

"Well," he arches his eyebrows, "the Cabral Élissa is a tomb..."

He doubles over, clapping a hand over his mouth; the cough sounds slippery and wet, saliva and blood guttering up and down his throat with each violent expulsion of air.

"Petros..." She circles Francesco's desk, hand raised.

The blood rushes out of his cheeks and his body quakes with silent tremors. Her nimble fingers encircle his wrist, the thumb of her other hand passing gently near a multitude of dark purple marks. The top two buttons of his collar are undone, and she can see his sternum bloated and bruised from the internal hemorrhaging. She follows a line of raised skin from a recent burn, one of many spidering across his body like a tangle of roots.

"Cease your fussing." He sucks in several shallow gasps. His eyes, bright in spite of the swelling, survey her, oddly benedictory, as though she is the dearest thing he has ever beheld.

As though he never expected to see her again.

Which, Paula reflects drily, is not so unlikely a supposition, considering what he endured in Carthage.

"Call me entitled, Sister Paula," he murmurs, "but I believe surviving a cannon blast at point-blank range pardons my sporting a few contusions."

"Since when do several shattered ribs, a broken nose, two punctured lungs, a severed intestine, spinal separation, and third degree burns over half your body constitute contusions?"

He grunts. "You've already read Simone's diagnoses, then."

"Less a medical conclusion and more a sentence. How many times has she been forced to put you back together over the last fifteen years, Brother Petros?"

"If not for her augmentations, the Goliath would have killed me. I am in _il Dottore's_ debt."

"Several times over, I should think." The dim, gray daylight throws a faint aura in front of her, firing the motes of dust hanging in the air and elongating the cut of her shadow. The sound of the rain lingers in the cold of each breath. "But Sister Simone was not in Carthage. While her... past interventions have made you sturdier than most, you could not have survived the battle without someone tending to your injures."

"Do the details matter?"

"I rather think they do, Chief."

Petros goes rigid, eyes darting everywhere, his the swallowed quiet of a child listening for the scratch of monster claws under the bed, an old quilt clutched beneath his chin.

"Chief," she says, softly, a crystalline certainty forming in her mind, "forgive me my candidness, but it is not like you to allow your quarry to escape... much less at the cost of your entire battalion."

Her words sting, and his expression resolves itself into something sharp and commanding. "If you've quite finished itemizing my transgressions, Paula, I trust you're building to a point––"

"Abel Nightroad has a kind heart. When last our paths crossed, he did not leave me to die. Nor, I think, would he abandon you to your fate."

She watches the shame wash over him in waves, his head lowering by increments until the fine curtains of seawater hair conspire to conceal his expression; he waits helplessly for what he anticipates to be her furious or pitying reaction to the stark evidence of his humiliation.

For the first time since Brno, she feels sundered by a riptide of emotion that scours the inside of her head and leaves her numb. She is drawn by the need for the stability and familiarity the Chief provides and yet is driven away, as always, by his naivety, his sense of honor so exacting it is almost archaic... at once attracted to and repelled by the very qualities she herself seeks to outgrow. She wants to laugh at the absurdity of it. Cry at the unfairness of it. Scream for the loss.

She reaches out to touch the Chief Inquisitor's face, and he bows and bends away from her attention. She has observed similar behavior in bacilli avoiding antibacterial agents on a petri dish. He turns away with the same manic intensity with which he does most everything, so of course the motion jars his injuries, and his expression creases with pain. She traces with her eyes a constellation of welts and bumps and small, concentrated burns erupting through the still-healing skin of his face and hands.

And yet, despite everything, he is inexplicably, impossibly alive... his body broken and his spirit troubled, of that she is certain, but alive nevertheless... even after dragging himself through a landscape that held only death for everyone else.

"I was assisted by servants of the Holy Mother Church," he murmurs.

"By the AX."

"A matter of semantics," he says with a belligerent edge. "It amounts to the same thing."

"I think Cardinal di Medici would take issue with that statement." She pauses. "As would you... not so long ago––"

"Might I ask you something, Sister Paula?"

"... Of course, sir."

"Do you believe in God? Truly?"

She blinks, caught off guard. "What sort of question..."

"Please. Indulge me."

Her vision fills with speckles of black and behind that, the reflection of blood red at the back of her eyes. "Yes... I do. You know I do."

"What would you do if you ever found Him? Would you question Him? Doubt Him? Allow Him to be fallible?"

She frowns. "I'm not sure I follow. But... these words, Brother Petros... you are the Director of the Department of Inquisition. Heresy––"

"People grow," he presses on, unmindful of her warning. "Why shouldn't God grow with us?"

"Chief..." she says after a silence that is, at first, merely uncomfortable stretches to an unbearable length. She quotes: _"Of old you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you will remain; they will all wear out like a garment. You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away, but you are the same, and your years have no end."_

"He is eternal, and He is perfect, but what if..." she hears the sound of skin scraping on skin; Petros is rubbing the tips of his long, calloused fingers together distractedly... "what if that perfection does not condemn, but _condones_ change?"

She closes her eyes: human lives are small, insignificant points of no dimension, circumscribed by hollow loves and self-serving desires. They are, in direct contradistinction to God's grace, changing and temporary. Filled with confusion, with helplessness. With pain.

"Without exception, forgiveness of sins and eternal life are impossible without the perfect satisfaction of God's justice... His righteousness forms the ground of the Gospel and shapes the nature of our redeeming work. All this predicates upon consistency... upon divine truth. Truth is vital, Chief."

"But without love, Hanna, it is unbearable." Upset, sudden and insistent, twists the muscles of his mouth. "People change. People adapt. They make mistakes. They grow." She swears she sees him shudder. So many thoughts are swirling in her mind that she doesn't register her partner's long hesitation until the man speaks again: "They... forgive."

"... What is going on, Pietro?" Her use of his Christian name has the desired effect. His chin jerks up and his eyes widen as he scans her face. The possibility of covering his hand occurs to her, but she resists, not knowing how he might interpret such a gesture. Unsure, as well, how she _wants_ him to interpret it. When he still doesn't say anything, she visibly stiffens, steeling her courage, and then continues speaking: "Did something happen with the AX––"

He grimaces at the suggestion but does not, she notes, deny it outright. "Forgiveness leads to real change. At the root level. Where it allows Lord's power and strength to work within our pitiful weakness. That's not shame and loss. That's mercy and grace. From a good, redeeming God... I..."

She feels vaguely ill, but she can't help but find her doubt of his essential integrity, and the shadow of contempt it casts, spreading out from him to the whole Church. Indeed, he is walking a perilous line: indulging mercy –– or, dare she even entertain the possibility, _affection_, towards the AX, much less the vampires they shelter –– would declare the Inquisition, the entire Catholic Church, the core and substance of Christendom with all Her divines, sages, saints, and martyrs, with successive thousands of believers, age after age...

_Wrong._

Petros closes his eyes and knits his fingers as though to keep them from forming fists, trying to marshal his thoughts, which want to scamper, like frightened rats, in six different directions. He wants to tell her; she senses his unvoiced confession lodged in his throat.

But he says nothing, because he knows she will not play accomplice to any deception which might jeopardize Francesco's position.

He says nothing, and in so doing, he spares her the pain of having to split her loyalties.

It is a small kindness.

His expression is so bleak that she resolves to looking away from him, not out of lack of humanity but from a fear of being drawn into a request for further kindness, a request that can only bring her face-to-face with some central revulsion, a revulsion of Petros or herself or both. Instead, she turns her head and stares out the casement window at the gardens instead, wet and slippery and as dark as the center of a body, where the roses glisten red under the rain.

"I apologize, Sister Paula..." He seems to hunt for a proper explanation, but, like a tangle of string with a frayed end, the effort seems all loop and no beginning. Blotchy scarlet rushes his complexion. "I must be more tired than I thought."

She purses her lips. A moment passes.

All of his conclusions in life have been reached through the principle of service, for he believes, as a servant of God, it is his mission to love and minister to others as Jesus did –– and, on the converse, to be prepared, always, to combat the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Violence, to their shared institution, does not amount to wanton butchery, but to a sacred duty marked by seriousness and sincerity. And yet, Petros's faith, which has been hammered into his very marrow, has been shaken by... _something_ under the high, hot sun of the Carthaginian desert, the edge of the barren world burning under a ball of molten nickel.

Something has changed him. Some_one_, perhaps...

Petros leans his back against the wall, his countenance deathly white. His injuries and the firefights over Carthage have sapped his stamina. His posture isn't quite so looming, nor his booming euphony so forthcoming. If not for his devotion to the Bureau, she believes he would not have been well enough to stand under his own power, much less suffer the indignity of Francesco's vehement castigation.

"So much death... my soldiers, Paula..." he says hoarsely, incongruously. She sees him searching for a way to express his frustration, his fury... his grief. "It was the seige of Brno all over again... I could not protect them... I was too weak... I watched them ripped to pieces, screaming..."

"Chief..."

"I couldn't save them," he says once more, each word settling like a stone in a crushing.

"Regret," she murmurs, "is the most useless form of guilt. It always arrives too late to do any good. We have all made mistakes, but we had best not keep making the same mistakes over and over again."

"I do not," says Petros, not modestly but, as always, truthfully. He closes his eyes, his hands clutching the wrists opposite, nails digging in deep, scratching. Pain to replace pain. "I keep making new ones. I suspect I have a certain talent for it."

No...

This man has never, not _once_, had the least intention of sending his own soldiers on deadly enterprises if he were not going himself. For him to return alive when so many of his subordinates have died invites a self-loathing bordering on complete personal disgrace. His dignity has been obliterated, replaced with a pervasive sense of shame.

She has an intimate understanding of humankind's vast capacity to experience suffering, as well as its equally vast capacity, and hungry willingness, to inflict it. She carries unspeakable memories of torture and humiliation, and an acute sense of vulnerability that attends the knowledge of how readily her many, many victims can be disarmed and dehumanized. Even Petros, who she has always held in a reliquary of purity, for so many years physically unsullied, is, in the end, beyond any earthly redemption... so steeped in blood that all the vampires in the world couldn't hope to glut themselves on it. Pietro Orsini, she knows, has never really understood the quality or condition of being selfish, nor has he ever had time for personal ambition; paradoxically, it is a sacrifice he has willingly made for his career. He thought –– believed –– for most of his life that his vocation was to protect the flock of which he was made leader.

Now, in his overbearing guilt, panting and sad and stunned by shame, all he can do is grieve his men, and hate himself for the simple fact of his continued existence. Perhaps, in his eyes... the most selfish sin of all.

Paula finds herself wishing she could fall in love with him.

And as she wishes it, she knows that she cannot.

Instead, she raises a hand to brush the hair by his temple, then lets it fall.

His blue head bows and becomes lost in its own shadow.

Paula leans forward, and gently kisses the space between Petros's closed eyes.

"I forgive you."

* * *

The setting sun streams through the airship's bow viewport, the light bronzing the jubilant face of the man at the helm. On the console rests a leather notebook, in which he is writing in characters so regular that they might have been mechanically printed.

"You landed in Rome sooner than we anticipated."

He smiles at her; she stares coolly back.

"Sister Paula. What an unexpected pleasure."

"Save your complaisance, Brother Matthaios. My business is with your prisoner."

"Is it now." The smile is intractable, but then again, so is its owner. "Forgive me my impudence, Vice Chief, but I do not recall having received a missive regarding your presence here. My prisoner is a traitor and a heretic… I'm afraid I have to be rather strict in matters concerning his security."

Brother Matthaios's manners and bearing are, as ever, beyond reproach. But the longer she regards his expression, the more she notes his face slanted at an angle which gives to his right-hand side a look of wry amusement and to the left, which dips downwards across the chin, a remorseless twist.

Paula does not like Matthaios; the feeling, she suspects, is mutual. He never really forgave her for ordering him to cease his pursuit of the AX during the d'Este scandal, nor she him for his wanton, indiscriminate carnage imperiling Francesco's political security on the same occasion.

"Do your orders from Cardinal di Medici directly contravene my being here?"

"There is no allowance for it," he amends smoothly. "I expect if His Eminence anticipated the Archbishop having any visitors, then he might have informed the aforesaid Archbishop's jailer."

"And does Francesco tell you everything, Matthaios?"

"I may not be His Eminence's favorite, but you'll find I'm adept at making inferences, Paula."

Bully for you, she thinks venomously. "If you're as accomplished at putting words in the Archbishop's mouth as you are, evidently, at putting them in Francesco's, then I expect you'll have your confession presently."

"He may yet surprise you. The man is vain and overly confident... given the rope, he may well find a way to hang himself." Matthaios lets out a reedy little chuckle. "You'll find the fellow is quite recalcitrant. Brother Petros –– no love lost there, evidently –– agreed with me that putting him to the brand and lash was the most expedient way of reminding him of how desperate his situation has become, and the value of a quick, full confession." He tilts his head to the side and studies her with the sort of mild and cruel curiosity she's seen cats regard mice. His tiny, guileless smile is still there, but it is small, contained with military precision. He has his arms looped behind his back; out of her line of sight, she suspects his hands are clenched with white-knuckled tension. "Not only will it cut short this whole accursed affair, but it will put His Eminence at ease, as well." Matthaios smirks. "Consider it an apologia for the... _regrettable_ waste of time and resources in Estonia."

"Spare me," she says, sneering delicately. "Open the door, Brother Matthaios."

"I do not think that would be wise, Vice Chief. I am terribly sorry to be a nuisance."

There is a subtle, gilt shimmer in her dark gaze. "Your decision sounds less like a directive from our superior and more like a matter of personal appraisal."

"They are not mutually exclusive."

"What are your grounds for refusing me?"

"Besides the fact Petros and Francesco both mandated his isolation?" he muses, fixing his beetle-black eyes on her. "There is the matter of, shall we say… conflicts of interest. Old loyalties."

The lines of her jaw and nose grow harsh, the shadows obliterating all details that may otherwise have softened them. "Old loyalties..."

"Emanuele d'Annunzio was once your superior, no? He was already stationed in the East by the time I took Holy Orders, but you and Brother Petros served under him some eight years ago, did you not?"

"I fail to see how this fact obviates my visiting privileges but not the Director's."

"I would be mortified for you to think I was being tactless... however..." For all his show of reluctance, Paula has the distinct impression that Matthaios is enjoying his playacting at coyness, as seducers take pleasure in the corruption of innocence. "There are certain canards circling about that allege that you and the Archbishop were... _close_." He bows his head. "You mustn't misunderstand me, Vice Chief... I do not place stock in rumors and here-say, but the parameters of my orders are such that it would pay to be overcautious. If Father Nightroad were incarcerated, for example, I would likewise not allow the Lady Saint to visit him."

The comparison's insinuations are not lost on her.

"I would speak with the Chief, Matthaios," she says with devastating softness, honorifics abandoned. "Now."

"Alas, Paula, the Chief remained in István to guard the Pope and the Lady Saint. Speaking of whom..." He brings his face very near to hers. He has impossibly narrow, white teeth. "You know," he hums, a poisonous little purr, "I can't help but wonder if our esteemed leader harbors a soft spot for the girl. She's such a tender, fragile little thing, you know... for someone of her prestige and status. It's something in her eyes. Some clarity. Some grace. She is not yet... _sullied_. Which is why, of course, she's so valuable. And you know as well as I that Petros has long harbored a weakness for innocent creatures."

"Blessed are the meek," quotes Paula imperiously, "for they shall inherit the earth."

"Oh indeed, indeed. But you must acknowledge, dear Paula, that Petros's overweening tendency towards protectiveness, even in the teeth of Francesco's direct orders, takes on a no doubt self-righteous but undeniably _perfidious_ overtone."

"Your _point_ being, Matthaios?"

"There is about this entire István debacle the unmistakable sense of good faith denounced. An Archbishop, a traitor to the Holy Mother Church? A Saint, in possible congress with a vampire? The Director of the Department of Inquisition, so mired in mercy he can no longer fulfill his mission? The Bureau Director projects an executive ability moderately competent at maintaining and maneuvering an army in a campaign... alas, he is blighted by this impulse towards _altruism_. I know it. You know it. Perhaps more pertinently, Francesco knows it." His leprous words twist through her hindbrain, squirming and fighting and eating each other with saw-toothed mouths. He grins at his own insolence. "Bad business, Sister Paula," he says soberly. "Very bad business."

Just for a moment, she feels as if there is an invisible wire pulled to razor tautness between her and the other inquisitor, a humming tension suffusing the deck. Paula's anger rises to levels that frighten her. Her eyes travel to his neck, and she briefly entertains the possibility of snapping it like a wishbone.

She opens her palm, revealing an emei dagger fastened on the underside of her middle finger. She leans in until their noses are almost touching. She is shorter than Matthaios, but the heels of her boots elevate her to eye height.

The two stare at each other in silence for nearly a full minute before Matthaios snickers and wrinkles his nose impishly. "You seem ill at ease, Paula."

She favors him with an incinerating glare, which he receives with only a glimmer of vindictive triumph. She opens her mouth to speak when––

"Matthaios! What's going on out there! Who are you talking to!"

The increasing tension draws to a thinness that snaps softly away at its weakest point. Matthaios blinks myopically, and Paula retracts her emeici.

"Forgive me, Excellency," purrs the Moroccan Demon, turning towards the cell door. She's of half a mind to run his face on a belt sander and scour the smug expression away. "I have visitor for you."

Matthaios unlocks the cell. Its occupant manages to remain calm when he sees the junior Inquisitor lounging in the doorway, followed by herself.

He sits in a chair in the far corner of the cell, some distance back, his long legs stretched far in front of him. His head is tiled back against the wall, his forehead raised in odd, dendrochronological wrinkles, like the bows of an old tree, sanguine complexion paler than she remembers. A little heavier, a little grayer, a little more lined in the eyes and mouth, but still calm, cold, perfectly austere, gray-green gaze narrowed in wary contemplation, the collar of his black cassock covering the whole of his throat, as though trying to protect it. Although he has, she notes, misplaced his purple stole somewhere between Rome and István...

Paula's eyes rise and fall in a cursory sweep. Emanuele d'Annunzio appears to possess all the standard orbs and digits –– all fingers and eyes and ears, at any rate, although his boots and his rigid jaw make it difficult for her to assess the state of his toes and teeth. Matthaios's torments, if there even were any, must not have been overly taxing.

Stepping fully into the cell, hemmed in by the gray spars of the brig's iron frame, Paula is struck with the uncomfortable sensation of standing inside a ribcage. The film of dust coating the bulkheads is as dry as the membranes of dead skin stretched across thin metal bones.

She senses Matthaios loitering just beyond her line of sight, leaning against the wall, arms folded, his expression tense and his eyes focused, unwaveringly, on her. She feels the beetle-black stare like two cigarette butts burning holes on the side of her throat.

"That will be all, Brother Matthaios," Paula murmurs.

The smile falters a fraction. His shoulders tense, his eyes, if it is possible, a hair narrower than before. "Vice Chief––"

"I do not like having to repeat myself. Leave us."

Matthaios dithers over whether or not to shut the door. The passive glare he shoots Paula –– which she pretends not to notice –– is almost comically baleful as he skulks back to the bridge, kicking the cell door closed with the heel of his boot on the way out.

The creases on d'Annunzio's high forehead deepened as Paula and Matthaios exchanged words, but now they suddenly disappear as he springs to his feet.

"Paula!" He lurches towards her. She holds her ground. "Francesco has come to his senses at last..."

"Forgive me for disabusing you of the possibility, Excellency, but I'm afraid His Grace's position remains unchanged." She looks at him, her tone as expressionless as her face. "I am here on my own authority."

"You have to put a stop to this madness!" he hisses; she doubts he registered a single word she said. "It's that harlot, Sforza... she's in league with the vampires! Her agents have been fraternizing with them, and Francesco is too proud to see it!"

"I am here to ascertain what happened in István, Excellency," she interrupts him, holding up a placating hand. "Brother Matthaios has been less than forthcoming with specific details, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will only speak through the Bureau Director, who has yet to return from Hungary."

"That's because that idiot is in on it, too!" snaps d'Annunzio, the muscles in his face snarled in chin and cheekbones. His countenance, sheened with perspiration, has grown wolfish, distended and warped in primal anger; he grips the back of his chair so hard that his knuckles are a stark white. "Orsini is helping Sforza's Special Operation Section... just like he did in Carthage!"

Paula pauses; she keeps her expression carefully schooled, but her heartbeat manages to shake loose an alarmed breath. "That is a very serious accusation, Archbishop. He is the Director of the Department of Inquisition. Have you any evidence to support your claims?"

"Isn't it _obvious_?" Agitated, he hooks a finger under the collar of his cassock and pulls it loose. "I've always suspected he was soft in the head, but the damnable halfwit is soft in the heart, too! He takes... _pity _on them. Do want to know why he's still in István, Sister Paula?" he hisses. "Do you want to know why he hasn't returned with Brother Matthaios, why that bitchhound Sforza and her dogs tolerate his presence?"

"In lieu of your presence, he took command of the remaining Carabinieri forces in the city as well as any military policemen––"

He lowers his voice to a conspiratorial, hoarse whisper, speaking for Paula's benefit alone now. "He's _burying _it."

_What..._

Paula exhales slowly. "I beg your pardon?"

"The Countess of Babylon. Brother Petros stayed behind to help Blanchett and Nightroad and all the others hold a damn funeral. To read the wretched thing its last rites... to give it a Christian burial!"

Baseless accusations are the last refuge of the desperate: Archbishop d'Annunzio is desperate, Paula can be certain, but she does not find the allegation as ill-founded as she wishes she did. It is tempting to dismiss the charges as the feverish rantings of a traitor and heretic, and doom d'Annunzio to whatever inventive tortures Brother Matthaios is no doubt mulling over with a certain gratified relish. But Paula finds herself carefully, as befits a situation in which a man's soul hangs in the balance, considering her course.

She remembers, in an instant, a bitter morning nearly twelve years ago. Rain plastering her hair to her forehead. Her toes and fingers frozen to desensitized stubs. A deep fog swallowing the base of the river quay, leaching out the color of the city, turning everything the same stony gray as the Castel Sant'Angelo. A pile of corpses pitted by mud and blood and burrowing insects, milky blue eyes staring into the frozen sky while lipless mouths hang open and fangs glitter in the crystalline dark.

A tall, blue-haired boy, daring to ask the unthinkable:

_May we hear final confession?_

Paula finds herself answering with brazen frankness: "Forgive me if this sounds like idle speculation of your part. I intend no disrespect, Excellency, but how can you be sure the Bureau Director is involved, or even if the AX did, in fact, elect to dispose of the body on consecrated ground? Did not the Lady Saint dispatch the creature herself?"

"Don't be naive, Paula," he sneers. "Blanchett didn't kill that vampire because they were never enemies! She tried to save its life! The AX were allied with it from the start, and Brother Petros with his bleeding heart was there assisting them at every juncture!"

"In the interest of stopping your treachery, Archbishop," concludes Paula sternly. "You must realize the cooperation between the Special Operations Section and the Inquisition was predicated entirely on circumstantial necessity. Brother Petros was protecting His Holiness, who _you_..." Paula glares, then, with banked embers in her eyes; there is more promise of pain expressed in those few seconds than Matthaios is capable of in a lifetime, "tried to murder, along with Cardinal Sforza and her agents."

"I regret having to put His Holiness in harm's way, but Sforza is allied with the Empire," insists d'Annunzio, finally managing to get his volatile temper in check. His mouth is small and rigid, accustomed to the sorts of expressions adept at masking cruelty, born of a lifetime of suspicion and the special kind of superiority that radiates little save contempt. His is one of those faces that only twitches in some perverse intimation of joy when a deception is achieved or a punishment exacted. "You know it as well as I that Sforza is a schemer... the Inquisition has long suspected that witch of unsanctioned diplomatic communication with the vampires."

"If you suspected Cardinal Sforza of treason for as long as you claim, why not go directly to Cardinal di Medici with your concerns?"

"Ever the prosecutor, Paula," he says, the words honeyed poison, his gaze filigreed with black from where his pale eyes catch his vestments. He speaks with a menacing hiss: "I wanted to wait until the AX was well-entrenched in negotiations before bringing their treachery to light."

It is a feeble and obvious excuse. It also has a certain ring of truth about it, but that doesn't make it any easier to stomach. Justifications of things that can't really be justified –– at least on a personal level –– always feel the same, whatever the words used.

Besides, she knows him by intuition, as if he resides inside her head.

He cannot fool her.

"And what of Esther Blanchett?" She begins the question in an effort to make a connection, but now it seems equally apt for severing one, driving a wedge between the lie and its conviction. "Why was framing the Lady Saint a necessary part of this project, Excellency?"

"Because our illustrious Cardinal di Medici and his staff showed no sign of moving on Sforza, regardless of what we claimed. After Alfonso's silly little revolt, and since Petros failed so spectacularly in Carthage, Francesco's grown overcautious –– he needed evidence enough for a conviction. If I simply warned him verbally about Sforza, he'd have kept stalling to look for more available bodies of fact to disprove the esteemed Duchess's potential testimony. In involving Blanchett I merely..." he chooses his next words carefully, "gave the proceedings a nudge in the right direction."

She digs her fingernails into the tender skin of her palm so that she isn't tempted to rake them across the man's face.

He is a good liar. A great one. He lives by it, even believes it himself to a degree, as though willing reality through sheer eloquence and persuasion to bend itself to fit the falsehood.

Her own revulsion, dogged and luminous and familiar enough to be almost unconscious, is smothered by an outward incline of her head, a silent entreaty for d'Annunzio to continue.

"Now that he's arrested me, our frustrated Lord Duke has nothing readily at hand to use as rebuttal, because he did not anticipate Blanchett's allegiance to that vampire. And if I'm vanished into one of Matthaios's dungeons, never to be seen again, even if Francesco finds some manner of incriminating evidence –– which he won't –– Cardinal Sforza can spin any damning manifestations of treachery to appear as though they were done in the interest of protecting the Lady Saint!" He pauses impressively. "Just as Brother Petros does for our esteemed Pope!"

She starts as if he has slapped her, her eyes widening. And yet, the outward change in appearance is so negligible d'Annunzio doesn't appear to notice.

The transition from doubt and derision to a feeling of blind, magnesium-white fury is not a pleasant one.

"What would you have me do, Archbishop?"

"I know how Matthaios operates," he growls. "The little sadist will strap me to some operating table in the bowels of San Angelo and cut a piece off me for every one of his questions I refuse to answer. No." He catches her wrist swiftly, enclosing it in a gentle grip. "Permit me an audience with Cardinal di Medici, my dear. I believe, together, we may have enough evidence to burn Sforza and her entire brood at the stake. If you would but let me speak with Francesco, Paula..."

They stare at each other, frozen in a quiet tableau. He exerts only a light tension on her wrist. It would be so easy for him to pull her forward _to tip her into the river. _It seems as if he is waiting for something, his expression arrested, his chest rising and falling in a rhythm much faster than normal. It is clear that the Archbishop expects her to grant this absolution even though she offers no repentance.

_The next time he touches you..._

The brief point of contact stirs in her a profound anger, an undying hatred, an inexpiable guilt. The memory shrieks in her hindbrain like a misbegotten child, a monster with which she cannot live and which she cannot live without, wrenching a dissociated, formless trauma suddenly, unexpectedly, back into the forefront of her thoughts. Through it, she grows hyperaware of her body's elasticity, the rhythm of her blood and the fundamental architecture of her bones. The sense of presence is almost freeing, a biological response that is not a long and meticulous exegesis, but a profound sense of understanding, a bastard absolution which despoils and murders and dirties every blessing. It is the same comprehension that every night tramples through her sleep and cries out its damnation in her dreams, only now rendered into sharp relief... everything distilling down to that single hand on her wrist...

Her perfect composure never falters, but there is the ghost of a beatific calm in her eyes.

_"Przetoż idź, a pobij Amaleka..." _murmurs Paula. She curls her fingers around d'Annunzio's wrist, twisting his hold until they are grasping each other's arms. _"I wytrać jako przeklęte wszystko, co ma..."_

He has gripped her right hand. Her left, beneath her habit, tightens on the hilt of a moon blade.

"I will contest and bury all sinners. Professed virtues and alleged loyalties avail themselves nought, Archbishop d'Annunzio."

"Paula, what are you doing?" he demands, and yet his voice sounds... fragile, now that the usual contempt is absent. Strung tight, like something poised to snap. She feels he may well be going mad in his plight, his frenzied mind breaking its teeth on invisible bars like a skeleton in a starvation cage. His arm trembles from the effort of trying to pull away. "Let go of me!"

"Be still," she hears herself intone. "Those who occasion loss of dignity are hard to forgive."

There is no room in her, then, for resentment and helpless, unrealized hatred anymore.

There is no room for anything.

While he remains, her sin is imperfect. Unfulfilled. And thus... bereft of the hope of deliverance. Until she has washed her hands of the blood of every other, she shall remain unappeased.

It is as though she is unfinished, too broken to be beholden to Him. She cannot bear the grace of God.

Not yet.

_"Nie folguj mu, ale wybij od męża aż do niewiasty, od małego aż do ssącego, od wołu aż do owcy, od wielbłąda aż do osła... Amen."_

"Paula!" he hisses, his complexion the gray patina of terror.

She takes a deep breath, inhaling absolution with air.

It is not easy to entrust oneself to God's mercy. He has a very special capacity for accepting one's mistakes.

God forgets. God forgives.

But the Lady of Death does not.

"My name is Hanna."

She plunges her blade into his stomach.

D'Annunzio stifles a cry, trying to lurch away from her, but she clutches his sleeve and twists the handle side to side, turning it like a car crank through his bladder and up into his chest, putting her shoulder and hip into it for leverage. He paws entirely ineffectively at her wrist, opening his mouth as though to scream and managing only a desperate gasp as the knife's edge shreds the pit of his lungs.

She moves, and then he is dropping to his knees, boneless and silent, the skin dragged thin across his cheekbones. His sweaty hair adheres to his face, and his eyes bulge open. His hand, clutching the fabric of his mantle, relaxes and falls to his side, revealing what the careful bunching of the cloth concealed: the tunic split by a knife stroke from his navel to the edge of his stomach. As the edges of the fabric separate, she watches the blood soak into the waist of his cassock.

His eyes take on the pale opacity of stone, green no longer.

Emanuele d'Annunzio dies without issue.

Paula does not look at the body.

She passes Matthaios in the doorway. "It appears the Archbishop had a cyanide capsule hidden on his person." She wipes the blood from her blades on the oilcloth she keeps under her robes. "You may report to Cardinal Sforza in István that d'Annunzio took his own life."

"What have you done?" mutters the black-haired, black-eyed Inquisitor, forming some small creases near his mouth that are only faintly reminiscent of his perennial grin. Something of the soul behind the smile rears its decidedly ugly head; where once he was mocking and calculating and clever, he is now a cool, rapier-thin specter of a man, stark and unsmiling, somber and dangerous, eyes shifting from their undistinguished black to a color glittering winedark when contrasted against so much shadow. And yet, Paula takes some small satisfaction in his scuppered smugness.

"Exactly what Francesco ordered _you_ to do." Stopping before him with an expressionless face, Paula says shortly, "Am I wrong? Cardinal di Medici would never countenance the scandal, Brother. And now d'Annunzio will no longer bring shame to the Department of Inquisition."

"Why," he leans forward, puts his lips close to her ear, and hisses poisonously, "couldn't you just follow your _fucking _orders?"

"I made a judgement call."

"You may well be His Eminence's favorite plaything, dear girl, but Francesco didn't command us to act on our own damned judgements. You should have dragged d'Annunzio in here by the throat and then let _me_ decide what was to be done with the bastard." Matthaios collects himself with some effort. "I suppose it's too much to ask that you've got a signed confession squirreled away beneath those blood-stained skirts of yours?"

"Write it yourself if you're so inclined. You're a dab hand at forging signatures."

He sneers. "I hope you're happy now," he says, eyes glittering, full of contempt.

She offers the Moroccan Demon no immediate reply, and he stalks away, not the least bit interested in hearing whatever she might say.

The words, in any case, are not for his ears.

A flock of starlings roosting in the mooring mast catches Paula's eye, several of their number heading inland on the cold currents of Roman winter, the fresh-fallen snow absolving the Eternal City of its sins, the setting sun setting fire to the ribbon of the River Tiber. A breeze blows up, growing into a harsh and violent wind. Clouds conspire on the horizon, glowing from the palest amber-pink to a deep, flaming red. Paula doesn't know how long she stands at the bow window, but eventually a thin veil of flurries begins to tumble through the shifting air, a herald of storms in waiting.

She stares ahead, as if she is not looking at the snow but is instead peering at Vaclav Havel's dying face, as if the things that flicker past her eyes are not small dry crystals but after-impressions of a corpse growing cold on hallowed ground, buried beneath the bones of Brno. The storm lashes harsher, droplets mingling with congealing blood. She feels then what Vaclav must have felt, watching through his sweat-stained eyes as death came to him too quickly to avoid, but not too quickly to be anticipated. Bloody tears running down Know Faith's –– No Face's –– dead cheeks. The silver twilight charged with an immense and imponderable mystery.

In an instant Paula is aware, even if the precise formulation eludes her, that the world is unable to provide any account of its own reasons, its own accursed logic. Hers is an encounter with an enigma that no merely physical explanation can resolve...

She wonders if there can ever be a true, ritualistic ending, if one ever really did close a chapter in order to move on. A part of it stems, she knows, from a reluctance to endure the cost of severance, and yet another from a knowledge that Scripture, by its very nature, depends on the chapters that came before.

Judgement is the only closure; the wound will remain open, raw and bloodied, until that final shutting of the book. As for redemption, it is far too well-ordered for the likes of mortal men, a trite, ineffective bromide; and beyond that, its latitudes touch on something grand, divine, which human beings are too imperfect to deserve, much less bestow upon themselves.

"Oh, God," says Paula quietly, lofting her eyes skyward.

_I..._

_I am so sad._

"Forgive us... for we know not what we do..."

Hanna wipes the blood from her hands.

Outside, the snow is falling silver.

* * *

The End


End file.
